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A STUDY OF LOCKE'S 
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



DISSERTATION 

PRESENTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE 

SCHOOL OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 



BY 

RAYMOND GREGORY 



WILMINGTON, OHIO 
1919 



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A STUDY OF LOCKE'S 
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



DISSERTATION 

PRESENTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE 

SCHOOL OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 



BY 
RAYMOND GREGORY 



WILMINGTON. OHIO 
1919 



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A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



1. Standpoint of This Study. — The writer holds that reality 
is a systematic whole, that the mind, the body, and the external 
world are organic to one another. To insulate consciousness, to 
divide the universe into a realm of knowledge and a realm of 
external reality, he regards as an untenable position. In the words 
of Green, "A within implies a without and we are not entitled to 
say anything is without or outside consciousness ; for externality, 
being a relation which, like any other relation, exists only in the 
medium of consciousness, (only between certain objects as they 
are for consciousness,) cannot be a relation between consciousness 
and anything else."* 

In so far as it denies irresoluble dualism, this standpoint is one 
with so-called objective idealism, but it might just as well be called 
realism. It unqualifiedly denies that that which is present in the 
experience is therefore "in the mind," or that to be means to be 
perceived. Sensations, if we can speak of such analyzed elements, 
are external objects and not "ideas." On the other hand, it holds 
that the finite knower is part of the universe and not a passive or 
detached spectator. It affirms with Bosanquet that truth is the 
whole, that the worlds of finite centers of experience are true in 
so far as they correspond with the coherent whole of which they 
are parts. It is obvious therefore why Locke's theory of knowl- 
edge, embracing as it does the doctrine of ideas and of two worlds, 
may be regarded as a typical antithesis to this standpoint. 

2. Method. — Locke's theory of knowledge, however, will not be 
used as a mere foil for a rival theory, as is the case with the criti- 
cisms of Liebnitz and Cousin. In the spirt of Socrates, the writer 
will attempt to meet Locke on his own ground and criticize his 
theory of knowledge with reference to his own statements and the 
common facts of experience as accessible to him as to us. The 
method of immanent criticism here adopted will doubtless lay this 
study open to the danger of loose organization. Unity, it is hoped, 
will be achieved by constant reference to the standpoint of this 
study. 

•(Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 73.) . 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



3. Scope. — The chief concern of this study is Locke's theory of 
knowledge; but to treat the thought- world as distinct from reality, 
epistemology as distinct from metaphysics, would be to deny the 
validity of the standpoint of organic realism ; therefore, a consid- 
eration of Locke's metaphysical doctrines is essential. 

4. Locke's Knowledge of Philosophy and Science. — Before 
taking up his philosophic method it is of interest to note that 
Locke had a wide acquaintance with philosophic and scientific 
literature. In regard to the former it is said that before he ven- 
tured to publish anything he wrote, "he had acquainted himself 
with nearly every book of importance that had been offered to the 
world for its enlightenment or mystification on those sub- 
jects * *."f Special mention is made of Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, 
and Descartes. Being a doctor of medicine himself and a member 
of the Royal Society, he doubtless had a full and accurate knowl- 
edge of current scientific opinions, especially of human anatomy 
and physiology. He had a large number of friends among scien- 
tific men. Of this number Boyle, Sydenham, and Newton are of 
chief interest. The uncritical ease with which he adopted scientific 
opinions is attested by Brewer who is quoted as saying, "The cele- 
brated Locke, who was incapable of understanding the Trincipia' 
from his want of geometrical knowledge, inquired of Huyghens if 
all the mathematical propositions in that work were true. When 
he was assured that he might depend upon their certainty, he took 
them for granted, and carefully examined the reasonings and 
corollaries deduced from them. In this manner he acquired a 
knowledge of the physical truths in the Trincipia,' and became a 
firm believer in the discoveries it contained. In the same manner 
he studied the treatise on 'Optic/ and made himself master of 
every part of it which was not mathematical."* 

5. Locke's Problem. — Within this vast range of knowledge, as 
will appear to the reader of the Essay, Locke fastens upon certain 
doctrines here and there, each without reference to the others, 

t(H. B. Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, Vol. I. p. 72.) 
•(Ibid. p. 216.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



and holds to them with childlike tenacity. In his philosophic work 
he seeks to harmonize but never to discredit these doctrines. The 
ones of most importance here are the following: the doctrine of 
ideas, the duality of the universe, the mediating function of the 
nervous system, and the existence of an external, unperceived 
realm of atoms in motion. Locke's problem is to give an account 
of knowledge, its nature, origin, extent, and validity, on the basis 
of these doctrines. 

6. Locke's Empiricism. — On account of his psychological or 
introspective method of dealing with the problem of knowledge, 
Locke is usually classed as an empiricist. There is justification 

for so classifying him. He holds that experience is the source of 
all our ideas. "Whence has it [the mind] all the materials of 
reason and knowledge?" he asks. "To this I answer, in one word, 
from experience; and in that all our knowledge is founded, and 
from that it ultimately derives itself.* He insists that 
observation and experience rather than hypothesis or assumed 
principle are the true sources of knowledge.! "The simple 
ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the 
boundaries of our thoughts; beyond which the mind, whatever 
efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot; nor can it 
make any discoveries when it would pry into the nature and hid- 
den causes of those ideas."} 

He leads us to suppose that the mind is a passive receptacle 
for ideas, a white paper on which things become written, a wax 
tablet on which characters are impressed, a dark cabinet into 
which ideas come. Knowledge is a fermentation of the raw mate- 
rial thus supplied. Truths are produced by a kind of "logical 
chemistry." This interpretation is further illustrated by his em- 
phatic denial of innate ideas. There are no "innate principles," 
"primary notions," innate impressions," "original notions or prin- 
ciples," "truths," "maxims," or "propositions."§ The principle of 
contradiction is not innate, ** nor is identity.ff 

17. 



•II. i. 2. 




§1. it, 1, 13, 


til. i. 2, 10. 21,; 


I. iv. 25. 


••I. iv. 3. 


|II. xxiii. 29 




tfl. iv. 4. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



7. Locke's Rationalism. On the other hand Locke is quite as 
rationalistic as Descartes or Democratus. He believes that all 
things may be ultimately understood. Reality lies behind expe- 
rience and true knowledge can be attained only by thought. "For 
since the things the mind contemplates," he says, "are none of 
them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary 
that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it 
considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas."* He ad- 
mits many ideas which can be ascribed neither to sensation nor 
reflection, e. g. God, substance, relation. He admits all that a 
temperate advocate of innate ideas could demand. There are 
certain "principles of common reason,"f or "common sense."J By 
a certain inherent principle of repugnancy the mind "can not 
but be satisfied that there doth something at that time really 
exist without us."§ The "ready assent of the mind to some 
truths"** depends upon a "faculty of the mind" by which a truth 
is recognized by its "native evidence."ft This is "intuitive 
knowledge. "J J The ideas of relation the mind adds to the simple 
ideas§§ they are "creatures of the understanding." The percep- 
tion of identity or diversity is "the first act of the mind, when it 
has any sentiments or ideas at all."*** Likewise the idea of sub- 
stance comes neither from sensation nor reflection. ft t The clear- 
est and most certain knowledge that human frailty is capable of 
is intuitive knowledge. It is irresistible as the "bright sun- 
shine, "ttt All our knowledge, of whatever sort, depends upon 
this for its certainty and evidence. "That there is a God, and 
what that God is, nothing can discover to us, nor judge in us, but 
natural reason. For whatever discovery we receive any other way 
must come originally from inspiration, which is an opinion or 
persuasion in the mind whereof a man knows not the rise nor 
reason, but is received there as a truth coming from an unknown 
and therefore a supernatural cause, and not founded upon those 
principles or observations in the way of reasoning which make 
the understanding admit other things for truths."* 

•IV. xxi. 4. **I. ii. 11. ***IV. i. 4. 

tl. iv. 10. ttlV. vii. 10. tttH. xxiii: 4. 

JI. iii. 4. »IV. ii. 1. miV. ii. 1. 

§IV. xi. 9. §§III. iii. 11. 

♦(Letter to Lord King, Fox Bourne's Life of John Locke. Vol. I. p. 162. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



It is thus evident that Locke has two methods of investigation. 
This ambiguity of method together with the inconsistent but in- 
violable doctrines mentioned above preclude the possibility of a 
consistent system of philosophy. . It is no wonder that Victor 
Cousin exclaims. "Nothing is so inconsistent as Locke."f 

8. Ideas as Content. Before we can proceed with an inves- 
tigation of Locke's theory of knowledge it is necessary to deter- 
mine what he means by ideas, mind, and external body. 

In the first place idea stands for "whatever is the object of the 
dnderstanding when a man thinks. "J "Every one is conscious of 
them in himself, and men's words and actions will satisfy him that 
they are in others." Ideas "are nothing but the immediate objects 
of our minds in thinking."§ "Every man is conscious to himseli 
that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst 
thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt, that men 
have in their minds several ideas such as those experienced by the 
words whiteness, hardness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, 
army, drunkenness, and others."** The important point here is 
that ideas are in the mind. 

It must be assumed that Locke applies the term thinking to 
whatever goes on in the mind, and means sense perception as well 
as imagination or reasoning. What common sense regards as ob- 
jects in the external world, trees, elephants, houses, are really in 
the mind. These objects, whether it be thinking itself or man, 
are ideas that are there. That is, whatever is the object for an 
observing or thinking mind, is content. Ideas, then, are mental 
content. Although ideas are in the mind, yet they are not part of 
the mind. They appear to be foreign material over against which 
the mind stands as an observer. The nature of this content, in 
the perception of external objects, is, it is to be inferred from 

t (History of Modern Phil., Vol. II. p. 253. N. Y. 1893.) 

XI. i. 8. 

8 (Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester.) •*II. 1. 1. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



Locke's use of the terms "phantasm" and "species," imaginal. 
What is in the mind is, not the real object, but an efflux or species. 
We know external objects by means of these representations. 
When the idea is of thinking, believing, or knowing, the idea is 
still of the nature of an image, or representation, i. e., of the 
mind's own activity. In either case there is something there that 
stands for or is the mark or sign of the real thing or activity. 
Ideas are all that the mind is aware of directly. They are its 
only immediate objects. They are the boundaries of our own 
thoughts beyond which the mind is not able to advance one jot.* 
There are no unconscious ideas. An idea to be an idea must be 
taken notice of; it must be before the mind. There are no ideas 
that are not content. In the case of ideas, to be is to be perceived. 
When ideas are said, figuratively, to be laid up in the repository 
of the memory, that signifies merely that the mind has the power 
to have again ideas it once had. Ideas in the memory are "actually 
nowhere."f Impressions from the outside world may get as far 
as the brain, the "presence room" of the mind, but they are not 
ideas. "That which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in 
by the usual organ not being taken notice of in the understanding 
and so imprinting no idea in the mind, there follows no sensation. 
So that wherever there is sense or perception, there some idea is 
actually produced and present in the understanding.'^ Ideas, 
thus, appear to be entities of some sort that are present in the 
mind as its objects, but exist nowhere else. From his metaphor 
of the dark cabinet, we infer that ideas are entities, sui generis, 
contained in the mind as in a receptacle. They are not external 
real things, for they exist nowhere else but in the mind. Neither 
are they parts of the mind or any modification of it. They are 
neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, neither mind nor matter, but a tertium 
quid, unique and unanalyzable, 

•II. xxiii. 29. 
til. x. 2. 
til. ix. 4. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



9. Ideas as Modification. That ideas are content appears to 
be the obvious conclusion. But when we consider the mind, as 
Locke describes it, a passive substance, like a wax tablet or a 
white paper on which ideas are impressed, it does seem as if he 
intended us to regard ideas as modifications of the mind. Just as 
the seal imprints a figure in the wax so we consider that the ex- 
ternal object, through the agency of the sense organs and the 
brain, imprints a more or less faithful picture or image of itself 
on the mind. And just as the figure in the wax is a certain con- 
formation or modification of the wax so the idea is a certain con- 
formation or modification of the mind. This interpretation of 
Locke finds further justification in the fact that he does not deny 
the possibility that the mind is a material and hence impressible 
substance. 

Brown holds, as against Reid, that Locke's "ideas" are not fic- 
titious or hybrid entities which mediate between the mind and 
external objects, but are actually, according to Locke, himself, 
modifications of the mind. He quotes Locke as saying, "Our 
senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey 
several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various 
ways wherein those objects do affect them.* Now perception, it 
is admitted, is an act of the mind. Here we find Locke using, 
"perception" as an equivalent to "idea." Locke must mean, there- 
fore, that the idea is the perception, and consequently a modifica- 
tion or determination of mind. When Locke speaks of "percep- 
tions" being conveyed in, the figurative language does not confuse 
us. But he speaks of "ideas" in the same way, so why is not that 
figurative also? All this talk about ideas as separate entities con- 
veyed into the dark cabinet of the mind through the sense "inlets," 
is just so much metaphor. The "ideas" of Locke, thinks Brown, 
are not substantially separate and distinct things in the mind, but 
are acts or modifications of the mind. To use Brown's exact 
words, "I can not but think these, and the similar passages that 
occur in the Essay, ought of themselves, to have convinced Dr. 

•(Brown's Lectures, Vol. I. Lecture XXVI.) 



10 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



Reid, that he who spoke of Perceptions, conveyed into the mind, 
and of avenues provided for the reception of Sensations, might 
also, when he spoke of the conveyance of ideas, have meant noth- 
ing more than the simple external origin of these notions, or con- 
ceptions, or feelings, or affections of the mind, to which he gave 
the name ideas ; especially when there is not a single argumnt in 
his Essay, or in any of his works, that is founded on the substan 
tial reality of our ideas, as separate and distinct things in the 
mind."* 

Among the various opinions Locke expresses about "ideas," 
"one, however," says Hamilton, "he has formally rejected, and 
that is the very opinion attributed to him by Dr. Brown, — that 
the idea, or object of consciousness in perception, is only a modi- 
fication of the mind itself." This formal rejection is to be found 
in Locke's Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion. I quote di- 
rectly from Locke. "I see the purple color of the violet ; this, says 
he, is a sentiment : I desire to know what sentiment is ; that, says 
he, is a modification of the soul. I take the word, and desire to see 
what I can conceive by it concerning my soul ; and here, I confess. 
I can conceive nothing more, but that I have the idea of purple 
in my mind, which I had not before, without being able to appre- 
hend anything the mind does or suffers in this, besides barely 
having the idea of purple ; and so the good word modification sig- 
nifies nothing to me more than I knew before : e. g., that I have 
now the idea of purple in it, which I had not some minutes since."t 
Hamilton now quotes : "But to examine their doctrine of modi- 
fication a little further. Different sentiments are different modi- 
fications of the mind. The mind or soul that perceives is one im- 
material indivisible substance. Now I see the white and black on 
this paper, I hear one singing in the next room, I feel the warmth 
of the fire I sit by, and I taste the apple I am eating, and all this 
at the same time. Now, I ask, take modification for what you 
please, can the same unextended indivisible substance have differ- 
ent, nay, inconsistent and opposite (as these of white and black 
must be) modifications at the same time? Or must we suppose 

•(Lecture XXVI.) 

t(Exam. of P. M.s Opin. 39.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 11 



distinct parts in an indivisible substance, one for black, another 
for white, and another for red ideas, and so of the rest of those in- 
finite sensations which we have in sorts and degrees; all which 
we can distinctly perceive, and so are distinct ideas, some whereof 
are opposite, as heat and cold, which man may feel at the same 
time? I was ignorant before how sensation was performed in 
us; this they call an explanation of it. Must I say now I under- 
stand it better? If this is to cure one's ignorance, it is a Very 
slight disease, and the charm of two or three insignificant words 
will at any time remove it, probatum est."* 

It seems unavoidable to assume that Locke held, in one place or 
another, both these views in regard to the nature of ideas. Where 
he is most empirical, where he describes experience as he finds it, 
ideas are for him entities, sui generis, neither parts nor modifi- 
cations of the mind, which are what they appear as. But where 
he is concerned with developing a theory of perception on- the 
assumption of an external world of material particles in motion, 
he seems to regard the mind as an active-passive substance within 
this world, which is bombarded by these material particles, and 
which in turn reacts upon them. The scars of the conflict are 
ideas, impressions made by these material things upon the cogni- 
tive substance itself. There seems to be no use in twisting what 
he says to make it conform to a system. Locke seems to have ac- 
cepted two points of view which he was never able to harmonize, 
and neither of which he was able to discard. 

10. Ideas as Objects. Locke states so emphatically that the 
immediate objects before the mind are ideas, beyond which we are 
not able to advance one jot, that we are apt to conclude that ideas 
are always and everywhere these immediate self-contained ob- 
jects. "Whatever the mind perceives in itself," he says, "or is 
the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, 
that I call idea."f Whether we regard idea as content or modifi- 
cation of the mind, the term seems to be exhausted by the immedi- 
ate object. The object is the idea, we say, and there is no idea 
that is not an immediate object. Ideas make up the whole of what 

•(Ibid. 39.) 
til. viii. 8. 



1* A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



is presented and there is no idea that is not a part or whole of 
what is presented. That is, ideas (or objects) are what they ap- 
pear as, as given matters of fact. Psychology, from this point 
of view, is purely descriptive. It aims to state in an exact way 
how these natural occurrences take place. We have consequently 
the theory of association of ideas, by which we trace certain 
sequences or combinations of ideas. Consistently with this view 
Locke says, "some of our ideas have a natural correspondence 
and connexion one with another: it is the office and excellency 
of our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that union 
and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. 
Besides this, there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to 
chance or custom, ideas that in themselves are not all of kin, come 
to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to sepa- 
rate them; they always keep in company, and the one no sooner 
at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate ap- 
pears with it; and if they are more than two, which are thus 
united, the whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves to- 
gether."* 

As far as psychology of this type depends upon internal obser- 
vation, it is descriptive. But it can seek an explanation of these 
observed sequences and "gangs" of ideas, in the neural processes 
of the brain or of the whole nervous system. Locke does this. 
"Custom," he says, "settles habits of thinking in the understand- 
ing, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions of the 
body; all which seem to be but trains of motion in the animal 
spirits, which, once set agoing, continue in the same steps they 
have been used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a 
smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and, as it were, 
natural."! Now, ideas of sense, red, yellow, blue, tones, noises, 
tastes, and smells, are caused, according to Locke, by the impres- 
sions of certain objects upon appropriate sense organs, which im- 
pressions set up a corresponding agitation in the animal spirits, 
which is conducted along the nerve conduits to the brain, where 

•II. xxxiil. 5. 
tU. xxxlii. 6. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 13 



it causes the idea to appear to the mind. "And if these organs," 
he says, "or the nerves, which are conduits to convey them from 
without to their audience in the brain, the mind's presence room 
(as I may so call it), are any of them disordered, as not to per- 
form their functions, they have no postern to be admitted by ; no 
other way to bring themselves into view, and be perceived by the 
understanding."* "As the bodies that surround us do diversely 
affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, 
and can not avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed 
to them."f 

Locke is thus preparing the way for a complete explanation for 
the appearance and combination of ideas according to neural pro- 
cesses in the brain excited by outside objects, and continued or 
repeated according to chance or habit. Then, appearance of every 
idea is due to a neural process. Ideas are associated together in 
various ways due to the paths formed in the brain. Ideas as they 
appear to the observing mind are so many independent objects. 
All we can say is that they appear thus and thus in series or clus- 
ters. But below the surface of observation, in the brain, there we 
find the machinery for all these wonderful combinations. We can 
thus see why ideas are objects and only objects. They can not be 
more, from the side of the observing mind, than just what they 
appear as. It would be only a step, and that a logical one, to say 
that ideas are brain processes, that conscious processes are neural 
processes of a peculiar quality. Just as islands are the tops of 
mountains, so neural processes when they reach a certain level of 
intensity or complexity, stick their heads up into the field of con- 
sciousness, as it were. The real active agent in thinking would 
then be the brain. The mind as a separate active cognitive agent 
would be dropped. This is the precipice towards which his theory 
is leading him. 

11. Ideas as Meaning. Ideas are, therefore, according to this 
view of Locke, just mental content, i. e., objects. But, as Locke 
points out, men make mistakes in their thinking. Objects before 
the mind are thought to have a significance, which, in truth, they 

•II. iii. 1. 
tn. i. 25. 



14 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



do not have. Most of the disputes and manglings 
come from confused or undetermined ideas.* In the case of sense 
perception, when a man's idea of a leopard is confused or inade- 
quate, when his idea of a leopard consists merely of a beast with 
spots, he is apt to call every spotted beast a leopard. f He does 
this because his idea of the leopard is not clear and distinct. But 
if ideas are just objects before the mind, how can they be con- 
fused or inadequate ? If all spotted beasts look alike to me, as far 
as I am concerned, they are leopards. If a yellow rose and a pink 
rose appear to have no difference of color in a dim light, there is 
no difference, for ideas are what they appear as. 

Here is a real difficulty and Locke meets itj. The confusion 
comes in through the use of names, he says. There are various 
names for various objects and each name is supposed to have a 
determinate significance. The name leopard means a feline mam- 
mal with spots in broken rings or rosettes. The name jaguar 
means a feline mammal with spots in rosettes but with an addi- 
tional spot in the center of the rosette. If one means by leopard 
merely a spotted beast, the meaning or significance he attaches 
to the name is inadequate, and he is apt to call every spotted beast 
a leopard. But if he does attach determinate meanings both to 
leopard and jaguar, when he sees a spotted animal with certain 
characteristics among which is the central spot within the rosette, 
he applies the name jaguar to it, or if it is without this central 
spot, he applies the name leopard. The meaning of the different 
words is thus clear and adequate because he can apply the name 
correctly. But a man who can thus distinguish between meanings, 
may fall into error and apply the wrong name to the spotted ani- 
mal before him, if that animal is seen, say, in the twilight or 
through a tangle of undergrowth. The immediate object, in this 
case, is what it is, that is clear. The confusion lies in that it is 
possible to apply two names with different determinate meanings 
to the present object. The office of a name appears, therefore, to 
be that of a carrier of meaning. It is a means or instrument by 

•(Epistle to the Reader.) 
til. xxix. 7. 
|II. xxix. 6. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 16 



which we apply meaning or significance to the immediate object 
before the mind. When I say, "This is a leopard," I am placing 
the present object in that system which I call my knowledge of the 
animal world, i. e., the present object means something. When 
Locke speaks of clear and obscure, distinct and confused, adequate 
and inadequate ideas, he is talking about meaning or significance, 
and not about the immediate objects before the mind. 

12. Ideas and Sensations. We saw, while discussing ideas as 
modifications of mind, how Locke uses perception and sensation as 
equivalent to idea. This use of these terms is hard to justify. 
There is an idea of perception, of course, but perception is not an 
idea. This loose way of using perception and sensation can lead 
only to confusion, and whenever they are found with articles the 
or a, they should be translated into the exact terms signified. 
"Thus the perception," he says, "which actually accompanies, and 
is annexed to any impression on the body, made by an external 
object, being distinct from all other modifications of thinking, fur- 
nishes the mind with a distinct idea, which we call sensation; 
which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into the under- 
standing by the senses."* This probably means that when the 
mind has an idea which is caused by or annexed to an impression 
on the body made by an external object, the mind has the power 
to observe this having-an-idea-so-caused as a distinct object or 
idea. Having-an-idea-so-caused is perception, so if we call it sen- 
sation, sensation is a part of perception. Neither one is an object 
at first, both can be objects when the mind reflects upon its own 
processes. We can not say we have a sensation in the sense that 
we have an object or idea. All we can say is that we have the idea 
of perception or sensation. The only valid use of the term "sensa- 
tion" is that it is that part of perception which refers to the 
mind's having ideas caused by or annexed to impressions on the 
body by an external object. Sensation or perception is the power 
or quality of the mind by virtue of which the mind has ideas. 
Sensation or perception is to be considered in the light of some- 

•II. xix. 1. 



16 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



thing the mind does or of something that happens to it. It is a 
process, not an object. Locke himself says, "the perception of 
ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the body, 
not its essence, but one of its operations.** If the mind is in- 
tently occupied it takes no notice of impressions coming through 
the sense inlets. "Want of sensation, in this case," he says, "is not 
through any defect of the organ," etc. "And so imprinting no 
idea in the mind, there follows no sensation."f Here, he probably 
means that "sense" or "sensation," which he equates with "per- 
ception," is the-having-an-idea, the experiencing, not the object 
experienced. Since we have ideas of another class or from an- 
other source, sensation is one class of ideas, referred to the sense 
"inlets" and their source or cause. "This great source of most of 
the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived 
by them to the understanding, I call Sensation."} 

But Locke has at least two other meanings for sensations. 
In the first place, they are the same thing as ideas. Speaking of 
secondary qualities, he says they are nothing but the powers "in 
things to excite certain sensations or ideas in us."§ "Those ideas 
of whiteness and coldness, pain, etc., being in us the effects of 
powers in things without us, ordained by our Maker, to produce in 
us such sensations, they are real ideas in us, whereby v/e distin- 
guish the qualities that are really in things themselves."** In 
showing the radical difference between knowledge about and ac- 
quaintance with, between the idea of the cause of light and the 
idea of light itself, sensation appears to be merely content, i. e., 
idea. He says, "For the cause of any sensation, and the sensation 
itself, in all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas ; and two 
ideas so different and distant from one another, that no two can 
be more so."ft 

In the next place sensation means some impression or motion 
in the body, some disturbance in the sense organ or nervous sys- 
tem or perhaps an agitation of the animal spirits. At any rate, 
the sensation is not in the mind but in the body. It appears to be 



•*n. i. 10. 


••II. xxx. 2. 


til. ix. 4. 


§n. xxxi. 2. 


%TL !. 1. 


tflH. iv. 10. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 17 



the bodily correlate of the idea. "If it shall be demanded, then, 
when a man begins to have any ideas? I think the true answer 
is, when he first has any sensation. For since there appear not to 
be any ideas in the mind, before the senses have conveyed any in, 
I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with the 
sensation ; which is such an impression or motion, made in some 
part of the body, as produces some perception in the understand- 
ing/'* In speaking of the same water feeling hot to one hand and 
cold to the other he says, "for if we imagine warmth, as it is in 
our hands, to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion 
in the minute particles of our nerves or animal spirits, we may 
understand how it is possible that the same water may, at the 
same time, produce the sensations of heat in one hand and cold in 
the other/'f The sensation, we see, is in the hand, not in the 
mind, and that the heat sensation consists of motion in the minute 
particles of the nerves or animal spirits, and the cold sensation a 
less active motion. 

13. Simple Ideas as Given. I look at a tree. It is an object 
before the mind, a complex of colors, etc., and my mind may be 
said to be occupied about it. In this experience I can distinguish 
two separate provinces or fields of this occupation, viz., external 
sense and internal sense.J These two kinds of occupation or 
thinking are called by Locke, respectively, ideas from sensation 
and ideas from reflection. Ideas of the one sort are just external 
things of the common-sense physical world which are objects be- 
fore the mind ; and ideas of the other sort are those objects which 
the mind has when it reflects or observes its own processes or occu- 
pation when it has ideas. 

Among ideas from sensation, or ideas from reflection, there 
may be distinguished, thinks Locke, two kinds of ideas, viz., 
simple ideas and complex ideas. When my mind is said to be occu- 
pied about a tree, there are certain unchanging elementary objects 
in my mind, certain atomic unanalyzable sensations, as greenness, 

*II. i. 23. 

til. viii. 21. 
til. i. 4. 



l'i A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



grayness, roughness, smoothness, sheer odors and sounds. These 
are simple ideas. There are other objects, which are groups or 
combinations of these "sensa," of varying degrees of complexity 
and relationship, such as bark, leaves, rustling of leaves, "woodsy" 
odor, or even the tree itself. These are complex ideas. Among 
ideas from reflection there is the same distinction between simple 
and complex ideas. Suppose I am sitting under a tree and an 
apple falls to the ground. I pick up the apple, estimate its weight, 
look up into the tree and calculate its final velocity, and at last 
formulate a law of motion. When I tell my neighbor about this 
experience, I illustrate simple and complex ideas from reflection. 
In the first place my mind was occupied about the apple, i. e., I 
perceived the apple. But as Locke says, "it being impossible for 
any one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive,* I 
get the simple object perceiving-that-I-perceive, which is the first 
simple idea from reflection. If in my occupation about the apple, 
I doubt or believe, my reflection upon these furnishes me with two 
other simple ideas from reflection. In these cases, the mind's 
operation about its object is observed by the mind itself as an 
operation. A complex idea from reflection is the result of a com- 
bination, separation, or comparison of these simple objects of 
thinking. Thus, in telling my neighbor my experience, recounting 
my difficulties, hopes, fears, and at last my solution, that experi- 
ence, regarded as a whole, is clearly a complex of the simple ideas 
from reflection. 

Apparently simple ideas are as obvious to Locke as the grains 
in a heap of sand or the beads of a rosary. They enter by the 
senses, simple and unmixed. The coldness of ice, the whiteness of 
a lily, the taste of sugar, or the smell of a rose, are clear and dis- 
tinct, i. e., pure and unanalyzable.f They are the simplest forms 
we apprehend in perception. They are as obvious "to children, 
idiots, and a great part of mankind/' and to philosophers, as the 
stars and the sun. 

14. As the Result of Analysis. What are some of these 
simple ideas, say, from external sense? Locke says they are 

•II. xxvii. 9. 
til. ii. 1. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 19 



whiteness, sweetness, coldness, hardness, etc. Now, how are we 
going- to point out to a child whiteness, for example, simple and 
unmixed? Who, even among philosophers, ever saw just white- 
ness ? Simple ideas of this sort are not a part of our experience. 
There are no instances of such simple ideas. What we show the 
child is white milk, or white sugar. Whiteness is the product of 
analysis, not of direct apprehension. "It is true," he is compelled 
to say, "solidity can not exist without extension, neither can scar- 
let colour exist without extension; but this hinders not but they 
are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others as necessary to their 
existence or conception, which yet are very distinct ideas."* To 
see white as such, without the mixture or association of any other 
idea, one would have to experience it without size or shape. 

Simple ideas from reflection are still more difficult to substan- 
tiate. Experience gives us no pure perception, or believing, or 
thinking but all these are operations of one mind impossible of 
being immediately apprehended as separate and simple. These 
simple ideas are what the mind finds when it reflects upon and 
generalizes its own processes. Obviously simple ideas are found 
only by analysis. 

In summing up "the steps by which the mind attains several 
truths" he says, "the senses at first let in particular ideas, and 
furnish the yet empty cabinet ; and the mind by degrees growing 
familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and 
names got to them : afterward the mind, proceeding farther, ab- 
stracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names."f 
Again he says, "ideas become general, by separating from them 
the circumstances of time, and place, and any other ideas that 
may determine them to this or to that particular existence.''^ As 
a matter of fact, the examples of simple ideas that Locke gives, 
are just the general ideas or abstractions, which he here declares 
come before the mind as distinct objects only after a series of pre- 
liminary steps. Whiteness is a general idea which has to be ab- 
stracted from a number of instances of white things. There is 

*II. viii. 11. 
tl. il. 15. 
till. iiL 6. 



20 A STUDY OP LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



thus no evidence that the elements into which we may analyze 
sensational data are at any time in the mind as pure unmixed 
elements. 

15. Ideas According to Locke, May Therefore Signify : 

1. Immediate objects of the mind as content. 

2. Immediate objects of the mind as modifications of itself. 

3. The meaning of these immediate objects. 

4. These objects regarded as immediately apprehended. 

5. These objects regarded as the result of analysis or abstraction. 

16. Substance. When Locke is most empirical, the idea of sub- 
stance appears to be little more than a fancy, the supposition of 
an unknowable substratum ; but when he is most rationalistic, he 
makes much of it. There are three kinds of substance and it has 
various qualities which he enumerates. His empirical account 
may be outlined as follows: The idea of substance arises from 
the fact that the mind observes "that a certain number of these 
simple ideas go constantly together ; which being presumed to be- 
long to one thing, and words being suited to common apprehen- 
sions, and made use of for quick dispatch are called, so united in 
one subject, by one name; which by inadvertency, we are apt 
afterward to talk of and consider as one simple idea, which is 
indeed a complication of many ideas toether: because, as I have 
said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by them- 
selves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum where- 
in they do subsist, and from which they do result, and which, 
therefore, we call substance.''* The substance, then, of any con- 
stant group of ideas, for example iron, is just the name of this 
group, considered as a group, applied to it for the sake of con- 
venience; just as it is a matter of economy to speak of the Smiths 
or Browns instead of naming each member of the family. The 
substance of iron is merely a short-hand expression for a group 
of ideas that go constantly together. Common sense, of course, 
speaks inadvertently of iron or wood as if that meant something 
more. But when questioned it must answer, "I know not what." 

•II. xxiii. 1. 



I 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 21 



There is really no idea of substance, but only a supposition, a trick 
of language, due to the practical needs of speech. The affirmation 
of a substance or substratum is only a verbal proposition. It 
amounts to the proposition "x exists/' where x means merely a 
certain constant group of ideas. The only demand for such a sub- 
stratum is that any x about which we affirm or deny anything 
must exist. When this x is critically examined the demand van- 
ishes. The inconsistency in the idea of substance Locke does not 
hesitate to point out. "If any one should be asked, what is the 
subject wherein color or weight inheres? he would have nothing 
to say, but the solid extended parts: and if he were demanded, 
what is it that solidity and extension inhere in? he would not 
be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, 
saying the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked 
what the elephant rested on? to which his answer was a great 
tortoise. But being again pressed to know what gave support to 
the broad-backed tortoise replied, something he knew not what. 
And thus here, as in all cases where we use words without having 
clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children; who being ques- 
tioned what such a thing is which they know not, readily give this 
satisfactory answer, that it is something; which, in truth, signifies 
no more, when so used, either by children or men, but that they 
know not what; and that the thing they pretend to know and 
talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are 
perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark."** The demand for a 
substratum, Locke thus shows, is childish and contradictory.! 

Those who pretend to get more out of substance than simple 
ideas are taking words for things. J They feign knowledge where 
they have none, "by making a noise with sounds, without clear 
and distinct significations." "They who first ran into the notion 
of accidents as a sort of real beings that needed something to in- 
here in, were forced to find out the word substance to support 
them.* * * * And he that inquired might have taken it for as good 
an answer from the Indian philosopher, that substance, without 
knowing what it is, is that which supports the earth, as we take 

**II. xxiil. 2. 
til. xxiii. 37. 
JII. xiii. 18. 



22 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



it for a sufficient answer, and good doctrine, from our European 
philosophers, that substance, without knowing what it is, is that 
which supports accidents. So that of substance we have no idea 
of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does."* 
Substance is thus a word, not an idea. It is a name for something 
that occurs among ideas. It devolves upon those that use the 
word, thinks Locke, to show of what use it is in deciding questions 
of philosophy, f For Locke, the term explains nothing, but is a 
mockery. It is as if one should say all learned books consist of 
paper and letters, and that letters are things inhering in paper, 
and paper a thing that holds forth letters — "a notable way of 
having clear ideas of letters and paper!" On the other hand, 
when this problem of substance is brought squarely before him by 
Stillingfleet, Locke gives up his empiricism. Notwithstanding 
that he affirms over and over again that we can know nothing 
beyond our simple ideas, and that our ideas of substances are con- 
fused, childish, and born of ignorance, yet, almost in the same 
paragraph he asserts that "sensation convinces us that there are 
solid extended substances, and reflection, that there are thinking 
ones; experience assures us of the existence of such beings, and 
that the one hath a power to move body by impulse, the other by 
thought; this we can not doubt of. Experience, I say, every 
moment furnishes us with the clear ideas both of the one and the 
other." And notwithstanding that the demand for an outside 
cause of what is present in experience leads to the indefinite re- 
gress of the elephant and tortoise, and that such an explanation 
not only is obscure and confused but is a mockery, yet he affirms 
that God, that being who possesses infinite power, wisdom, excel- 
lence, and all the virtues known to man raised to the nth power, 
exists as the upholder and ruler of the universe because what is 
present in experience must have an adequate cause. Far from 
being obscure, the existence and attributes of God partake of the 
clearness and certainty of mathematical demonstration.} Still- 
ingfleet justly inferred from Locke's account that substance is 

•II. xiii. 19. 
til. xiii. 20. 
$IV. x. 1-7. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 23 



not grounded upon true reason. Accidents and modes must, there- 
fore, subsist of themselves. Simple ideas need no tortoise to 
support them, and could get along very well by themselves but 
for some fancies men have accustomed themselves to. In reply, 
Locke says that ideas of substances are made by abstraction,* 
although he admits that what he says in Chapter XXIII, might 
lead one to suppose that he held they were not. What he is really 
talking about here is, not the being of substance, but the idea of 
substance. "I cannot be supposed to question or doubt the being 
of substance." "So that, I think, the being of substance is not 
shaken by what I have said ; and if the idea of it should be, yet, 
(the being of things depending not on our ideas) the being of 
substance would not be all shaken by my saying, we had but an 
obscure imperfect idea of it, and that that idea came from our 
accustoming ourselves to suppose some substratum: or indeed, if 
I should say so, we had no idea of substance at all. For a great 
many things may be, and are granted to have a being, and be in 
nature, of which we have no ideas. For example : It can not be 
doubted that there are distinct species of separate spirits, of 
which yet we have no distinct ideas at all/'f in iris chapter tte 
throws the burden of proof on those philosophers who uphold 
substance ; here, in his letter, he shifts the responsibility. Locke's 
objection to substance was not, primarily, that the idea of it is 
confused, but that when critically examined there is no logical 
demand for it; that if we entertain the idea, provisionally, we 
see that it leads to an indefinite regress ; and that in asking for 
a substance as the support of ideas, we are asking for we know 
not what, and are fooling ourselves with a mere word. Now, he 
says, because our idea of substance is confused, or because we 
have no idea of it at all, is no proof that there is no substance. 
He says, in his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester, that he has 
everywhere affirmed and built upon the supposition that a man is 
a substance. The idea of man as an identical substance, either 
material or spiritual, he readily admits is otiose and childish, but 

•III. iii. 6., II. ii. 9. 

t (First Letter to Bishop of Worcester.) 



24 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



the being of man as such a substance, he maintains, he has never 
doubted, and that nothing he has said about the imperfect and 
ill-grounded idea in the least applies to the being of man as a sub- 
stance. The expression "idea of man as a substance'' appears, 
from his discussion, to be one of those "uncouth, "affected," and 
"unintelligible" terms, one of those "vague and insignificant forms 
of speech, and abuse of language," from which can be expected 
nothing but "obscurity and confusion."* But when we talk about 
the being of man, is not that something the mind considers? Is 
not the mind employed about that, and as an object of thinking, 
is it not an idea? In short how can we consider the being of 
substance apart from the idea of substance? Locke would prob- 
ably say that idea of substance is different from the idea of being 
of substance. What is the difference? The idea of man as a sub- 
stance, he has shown, is confused and useless. Now, if we are 
to turn about and affirm and build upon the idea of man as a 
substance, all our careful reasoning, all our precise choice of 
words, and all our trouble to get clear and distinct ideas, come 
to naught. With this distinction between idea and being, the 
great master builders, Boyle, Sydenham, and Newton, could have 
been vanquished. Let some one say to Newton : "I have the idea 
of a round square." If Newton objects that his idea is ill-grounded 
and confused and absolutely useless in science and practical 
affairs, he could, after the manner of Locke, reply, "I admit that 
the idea is confused, ill-grounded, and useless; I will admit fur- 
ther, on second thought, that I have no idea of it at all, but this 
is nothing against its being. The being of a round square is what 
I affirm and build upon." The difference then between the idea of 
man as a substance and the idea of the being of man as a sub- 
stance is, that, in discarding the one as ill-grounded and useless, 
I am trying to be rational, and in accepting the other I have given 
up being rational. 

17. Mind. "We have the idea of but three sorts of substances," 

* (Epistle to the reader.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 25 



says Locke: "1. God. 2. Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies."* Since, 
of course, he holds that they exist, there are consequently, three 
sorts of beings. But clearly this is not the most fundamental 
classification. In a fundamental sense God and finite intelligences 
are in the same class. It is better to take what he says in another 
place. "There are," he says, "but two sorts of beings in the world, 
that man knows or conceives. First, such as are purely material, 
without sense, perception, or thought, as the clippings of our 
beards, or parings of our nails. Secondly, sensible, thinking, per- 
ceiving beings, such as we find ourselves to be, which, if you 
please, we will hereafter call cognitive and incognitive beings; 
which to our present purpose, if for nothing else, are perhaps 
better terms than material and immaterial."f That God is in the 
same general class with finite beings appears from our idea of 
Him. From our experience we get the ideas of infinity, existence, 
duration, power, knowledge, pleasure, happiness, and several other 
qualities and powers. Among these ideas we find there are some 
"which it is better to have than to be without." Enlarging these 
to infinity, and putting them together in a complex idea, we have 
the idea of God.J God is thus an idealized man ; and in a funda- 
mental classification would have to be classed as a cognitive being. 
There are then two kinds of being, cognitive and incognitive. 
But when Locke comes to consider the stuff of cognitive beings 
he is very cautious. "We have the ideas of matter and thinking," 
he says, "but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any 
mere material being thinks or no ; it being impossible for us, by 
the contemplation of our ideas without revelation, to discover, 
whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, 
fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and 
fixed to matter -so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance; it 
being, in respect to our notions, not much more remote from our 
comprehension to conceive, that God can, if he pleases, superadd 
to matter the faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein 
thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty 

*II. xxxii. 2. 
tlV. x. 9. 
til. xxiii. 33. 



26 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



has been pleased to give that power, which can not be in any 
created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the 
Creator."* 

"I grant that I have not proved," he writes to the Bishop of 
Worcester, "nor, upon my principles can it be proved (your Lord- 
ship meaning, as I think you do, demonstratively proved), that 
there is an immaterial substance in us that thinks. Though I pre- 
sume, from what I have said about this supposition of a system of 
matter, thinking (which there demonstrates that God is immate- 
rial) will prove it in the highest degree probable, that the thinking 
substance in us, is immaterial." 

The nature of the mind, or that which thinks, according to 
Locke, at this place, is unknown to us. It may be material or it 
may be immaterial, he does not know, but probably the latter. 
Empirically, it is "that which thinks." Taken in conjunction 
with what he says about substance, that it is merely a name ap- 
plied to certain group of ideas, and is nothing apart from thi 
simple ideas themselves, the mind means nothing more than the 
system of ideas from- reflection ; just a center of experience, which 
for convenience, we speak of as a substantial being which has 
experience. The substance of a horse or a stone is just the com- 
plication or collection of certain simple ideas. So, "the same 
happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz. : thinking, 
reasoning, fearing, etc., which we, concluding not to subsist of 
themselves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body, or be 
produced by it, we are apt to think these the actions of some other 
substance, which we call spirit : whereby it is evident, that having 
no other idea or notion of matter, but something wherein those 
many sensible qualities which affect our senses, do subsist; by 
supporting a substance, wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and 
a power of moving, etc., do subsist, we have as clear a notion of 
the substance of spirit, as we have of the body; the one thing sup- 
posed to be (without knowing what it is) the substratum to those 
simple ideas we have from without; and the other supposed (with 

•IV. iii. 6. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 27 



a like ignorance of what it is) to be the substratum to those oper- 
ations we experience in ourselves within."* Mind may mean, 
therefore, nothing more than the unity of experience, a system, a 
center, or a law of experience. 

The mind or self according to this interpretation of Locke, 
appears to be the empirically discovered form or system in the 
ideas from reflection. The mind is not an entity over against its 
ideas, something got by abstraction, but a recognized system or 
organization of these ideas, i. e., it is concrete not abstract. This 
interpretation is rendered more probable by Locke's discussion 
of the identity of self. Identity of the self does not consist, ac- 
cording to Locke, in an identity of soul substance, either material 
or immaterial. It is the consciousness that I am the same self 
that I was yesterday, that gives personal identity. If this con- 
sciousness is present, if the thinking remembers and owns a series 
of past actions, the self persists, and the actions are the actions 
of an identical self. "Self," he says, "is that conscious thinking 
thing (whatever substance made of, whether spiritual or material, 
simple or compound, it matters not) which is sensible, or con- 
scious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and 
so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends. 
Thus every one finds, that whilst comprehended under that con- 
sciousness, the little finger is as much a part of himself, as what 
is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, should this con- 
sciousness go along with this little finger, and leave the rest of the 
body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same 
person ; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of 
the body. As in this case it is the consciousness that goes along 
with the substance, and when one part is separate from another, 
which makes the same person, and constitutes this inseparable 
self; so it is in reference to substances remote in time. That 
which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join 
itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with 
nothing else ; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions 

•II. xxitL 5. 



28 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



of that thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and 
no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive."* Ideas may 
not occur apart from some substance or support, just as a phono- 
graphic record has to have a support of some kind, something in 
which the record inheres. The record may be made in wax and 
transferred to tin-foil or vulcanite. What constitutes it the same 
record is not the support. The^ substratum of ideas may be 
material substance or spiritual substance, or at one time material 
and at another time spiritual, that is not the essential factor. 
What constitutes a self an identical being is the consciousness of 
the same. Let us assume transmigration of souls. "Let any one 
reflect upon himself," says Locke, "and conclude that he has in 
himself an immaterial spirit, which is that which thinks in him, 
and in the constant change of his body keeps him the same ; and 
this is what he calls himself : let him also suppose it to be the same 
soul that was in Nestor or Thersites at the siege of Troy (for 
souls being, as far as we know anything of them, in their nature 
indifferent to any parcel of matter, the supposition has no appar- 
ent absurdity in it) , which it may have been, as well as it is now 
the soul of some other man : but he now having no consciousness of 
any of the actions either of Nestor or Thersites, does or can he 
conceive himself the same person with either of them?"f Lock 
thinks not. "The same immaterial substance, without the same 
consciousness, no more making the same person by being united 
to any body, than the same particle of making without conscious- 
ness, united to anybody, makes the same person." 

On the other hand, if the same consciousness is united now with 
one soul and again with another, the self will be identical. If 
the same consciousness "can be transferred from one thinking 
substance to another, it will be possible that two thinking sub- 
stances may make but one person. For the same consciousness 
being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, the 
personal identity is preserved."! 

Locke goes on to found the right to reward or to punish upon 

•II. xxvii. 17. 
til. xxvii. 14. 
*II. xxvii. 13. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 29 



this consciousness of personal identity. "If the consciousness 
went along with the little finger when it was cut off, that would be 
the same self which was concerned for the whole body yesterday, 
as making part of itself, whose actions then it can not but admit as 
its own now."* "If Socrates and the present Mayor of Queen- 
borough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates 
waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, 
Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person. And to 
punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and 
waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right, 
than to punish one twin for what his brother twin did whereof he 
knew nothing, because their outsides were so like that they could 
not be distinguished.'^ There is no doubt, therefore, that Locke 
means by identity, not the same substance, or continuity of 
change, but identity of organization. He errs, if he does err, in 
assuming that consciousness infallibly reveals this organization. 
In illustrating identity from plant life, he says, "That being then 
one plant which has such an organization of parts in one coherent 
body partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same 
plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be 
communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the 
living plant, in a like continued organization conformable to that 
sort of plants. For this organization being any one instant 
in any one collection of matter, is in that particular 
concrete, distinguished from all other, and is that indiv- 
idual life which is existing constantly from that moment both 
forwards and backwards, in the same continuity of insensibly 
succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has that 
identity, which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts 
of the same plant, during all the time that they exist united in that 
continued organization, which is fit to convey that common life to 
all the parts so united."! So whatever Locke may imply about the 
infallibility of consciousness in revealing identity, the funda- 

•II. xxvii. 18. 

til. xxvii. 19. (Cf. Reid, Intel. Pwrs. Essay III. Chap. V.) 

*II. xxvii. 4. 






30 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



mental thing is that the self is a "concrete," a coherent organiza- 
tion, and that identity must consist in identity of organization. 
This much is in harmony with our standpoint. But Locke goes 
farther in believing that a self so conceived must necessarily be 
conscious of itself as it is. Just as it is impossible for one to 
perceive without perceiving that he perceives, so it is impossible 
for a self to be a coherent system without being conscious of it- 
self as a coherent system. The self, according to Locke as ac- 
cording to Royce, is a self-representative system. 

Notwithstanding Locke affirms, in speaking of the real essence 
of things, that "it is evident the internal constitution, whereon 
their properties depend, is unknown to us, 'that' our faculties 
carry us on farther toward the knowledge and distinction of sub- 
stances, than a collection of those sensible ideas which we observe 
in them; which, however, made with the greatest diligence and 
exactness we are capable of, yet it is more remote from the true 
internal constitution from which those qualities flow, than, as I 
said, a countryman's idea is from the inward contrivance of that 
famous clock at Strasburgh, whereof he only sees the outward 
figure and motions," and that "a blind man may as soon sort things 
by their colors, and he that has lost his smell as well distinguish 
a lily and a rose by odors, as by those internal constitutions which 
he knows not,"* yet he tells us, with persistent inconsistency, that 
we have clear and distinct ideas of the kinds of substances, and 
gives us a list of their powers and qualities. The mind is not 
only a substance, but it is a cognitive substance, and it has the 
qualities or powers of perception or thinking, motivity, or the 
power of moving, existence, duration, and number.f The mind as 
a substance is thus very far from being unknowable. "Notwith- 
standing anything I have said," he writes Stillingfleet, "the idea 
of a substance or substratum is grounded upon this : 'That we can 
not conceive how simple ideas of sensible qualities should subsist 
alone; and therefore we suppose them to exist in, and to be sup- 
ported by some common subject; which support we denote by the 

•III. vi. 9. 
til. xxi. 73, 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 31 



name substance.' Which, I think, is a true reason, because it is 
the same your lordship grounds the supposition of a substratum 
on, in this very page ; even on the repugnancy to our conceptions, 
that modes and accidents should subsist by themselves." The 
point to be noted here is that the idea of substance is inferred 
according to true reason. That is, I infer my existence as a sub- 
stantial being because I can not conceive how my simple ideas 
from reflection could subsist alone unsupported. 

What does "repugnancy" mean? What it should mean, and 
what it actually does mean in Locke's discussion of the identity 
of the self, is that we can not help regarding the elements of our 
inner experience as parts of a systematic organization. Applied 
to both inner and outer experience, it means that we can not but 
regard the universe as a systematic whole. "Repugnancy" is the 
logical demand for coherence. But here Locke interprets it to 
mean the demand for a substratum. He implies that coherence 
can be obtained in no other way. The mind or soul, therefore, has 
a substantial existence. 

It is to be noted that, according to Locke, we infer these 
qualities or powers to belong to the mind as a substance, just as 
we infer the substance of mind itself, from the actual presence of 
the simple ideas from reflection. "It is plain," he says, "then, 
that the will is nothing but one power or ability, and freedom 
another power or ability ; so that to ask, whether the will has free- 
dom, is to ask whether one power has another power, one ability 
another ability? a question at first sight too grossly absurd to 
make a dispute, or need an answer. For who is it that sees not 
that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of sub- 
stances, and not of powers themselves?"* Thus we infer that 
there is a soul substance because we can not conceive the simple 
ideas from reflection as uncaused or unsupported by a substratum 
or a substance. Likewise we infer that this soul substance has the 
various powers and attributes which are present in our experience 
as simple ideas from reflection ; because such powers can not but 

•II. xxi. 16. 



32 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



be powers of an agent, and such attributes attributes of a sub- 
stance. I am what the powers and attributes of my soul substance 
are. If I can think clearly and perceive distinctly that is because 
my soul substance possesses the power of thinking and the power 
of perceiving in a high degree of perfection. Every peculiarity of 
thought, eVery trick of expression, every idiosyncrasy of character 
or action, is due to an oddity or peculiarity among the powers or 
attributes of my soul substance. If I reason today in the same 
manner that I reasoned yesterday, or if I speak today with the 
fluency or hesitation with which I spoke yesterday, that is because 
the powers or attributes of my soul substance act today in the 
same manner they acted yesterday. What I call my personality 
depends wholly upon the powers and attributes of my substantial 
soul. If I am the same I that I was yesterday it is because my 
soul substance with its powers and attributes is the same. If I 
am not the same it is because it is not the same. Personal identity, 
thus, depends upon identity of soul substance. To assume the 
same consciousness or self to persist with a changing or with an 
altogether different soul substance, or vice versa, would be "too 
grossly absurd to make a dispute." 

Locke clinches the substantial existence of the soul with an 
argument very like that of St. Augustine or Descartes. The soul 
is not only inferred but its existence is intuitively known. This 
knowledge is comparable only to the intuitive knowledge of ideas 
themselves. "As for our own existence, we perceive it is so 
plainly, and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of 
proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own 
existence ; I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain : can any of 
these be more evident to me than my own existence? If I doubt 
of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own 
existence and will not suffer me to doubt that. For if I know I 
feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own ex- 
istence, as of the existence of the pain I feel, or if I know I doubt, 
I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 33 



as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then convinces 
us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and 
an internal infallible perception that we are. In eyery act of 
sensation, reasoning, of thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of 
our own being ; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest 
degree of certainty."* The "I" referred to here is, of course, am- 
biguous. It may refer to the soul, the cognitive substance, or it 
may refer to the empirical self, the "concrete" of ideas from reflec- 
tion, the systematic unity in thinking. Upon reflection we see 
there is a coherent organization in our inner experience, which 
gives a meaning to the "myself" and "I" of conversation. Locke, 
it seems, referred to the former meaning. Man "knows certainly 
that he exists, and that he is something."t He bases his demon- 
stration that God, as a spiritual substance, exists, upon this. Since 
man is something that exists, and since something can not be pro- 
duced by nothing, then there must be a real being as a producer 
of finite beings. It is likewise evident, reasons Locke, that this 
being has existed from all eternity, that he is the source and origin 
of all power and therefore most powerful, that as the producer of 
knowledge he is most intelligent, and so on for the other attri- 
butes of God. Locke regards God as a spiritual substance, for he 
says just that.§ In the same connection he speaks of men as finite 
substances. So there seems to be no doubt that Locke means for 
the "cogito ergo sum" to apply to the soul substance. Windelband 
says Locke's treatment of the cogito ergo sum "refers only to our 
states and activities, not to our essence; it shows us, indeed, im- 
mediately and without doubt, that we are, but not what we are."J 
This, it appears, is not the most plausible interpretation. Locke 
does not mean that we have an idea of the soul in the sense of an 
object like a tree or a stone, but that we get an idea of what it is 
in the sense of a meaning. The soul substance is that which 
thinks, perceives, believes, etc. The soul has these powers and 
attributes. Clearly, he is not referring merely to the states or 
ideas themselves. Locke may not draw upon the cogito ergo sum 
*rv. ix. 3. trv. x. 2. 

§11. xxvii. 2. t(Hist. of Phil. Tuffs trans, p. 469.) 



34 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 



to prove what the soul's powers and attributes are, but he cer- 
is that that which possesses these powers and attri- 
3 which are present in my experience and which demand a 
turn, is that which I intuitively know as myself. He iden- 
the inferred substratum with the intuitively known subject, 
ent for God is that since finite cognitive substances 
ite powers and attributes are intuitively known to exist, 
'e there must be an infinite substance with infinite powers 
tes as the producer and sustainer of finite substances, 
onstratively know God to be an infinite substance as we 
int . Lveiy know ourselves to be finite substances. Locke has, 
re, two distinct doctrines of the soul, one empirical, one 
: iialistic. 
18, Bodies. Whatever Locke may say about the idea of mate- 
rial or incognitive substance, he never doubts its existence. Al- 
though he says the idea of it is confused yet he also says it is clear 
and distinct. 

Incognitive substance stands to ideas from sensation in the 
same relation of a support or substratum as cognitive substance 
stands to ideas from reflection. But there is this difference: 
whereas we have no intuitive knowledge of cognitive substance, 
in the case of the soul substance we do have. Knowledge of our 
own existence has a higher degree of certainty than the existence 
of incognitive substance. But whether Locke's various utterances 
are consistent or not, incognitive substance, according to his rea- 
soning, is certainly not unknowable. We not only know that it 
exists but we know many of its qualities. This will be evident when 
we discuss primary and secondary qualities of bodies. But what 
does Locke mean by bodies? Presumably, in distinguishing be- 
tween primary and secondary qualities of bodies, and in affirming 
that colors, sounds, and smells are not qualities of bodies in them- 
selves, but that certain others are, Locke is explaining the human 
mind to an intelligent common-sense man, who has not considered 
this before. We, as his readers, evidently hold to the practical 
common-sense view that bodies are things variously shaped and 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 35 



colored, which exist outside ourselves, and are really so colored 
and shaped regardless of any of our own determinations. Bodies 
in this sense are not correlated groups of ideas, but are real ex- 
ternal and independent entities. Now, when Locke states that the 
objects the mind immediately perceives, trees, stones, houses, are 
its ideas, he forever annihilates the common-sense view. Bodies 
then become, for the neophyte, groups of ideas. In the next place, 
Locke shows, by a certain logical principle — a repugnancy of the 
mind to rest with ideas alone — that we must assume an m: 
ceived cause for these ideas. This cause is the thing in itself, the 
real body. What we at first naively took to be quality 
are now seen to be simple ideas in complex ideas. Whei 
the rose is red and of a certain shape and size, all I am warranted 
in meaning is that a certain complex idea, rose, has in it th 
ideas, redness, form, and extension. The term qualities is not 
applicable to common-sense bodies, but only to things ii 
selves, to critical bodies. Critical bodies have qi:- 
are much fewer in number than the simple ideas in commo 
bodies. There are no qualities in critical be: 
ideas of redness, sweetness, sourness, loudne:; 
qualities, such as extension, figure, 
simple ideas of extension, figure, and motion. 
now to have completed our novitiate. Never a 
sume on our philosophic innocence. 

We have now defined denotatively the substantive 
Locke's theory of knowledge and find that the 
them are ambiguous and inconsistent. Ideas may be m 
of the mind, content, or meaning. Substance 
language or a real existence. Mind may be mer 
organization or a cognitive soul substance. Bodie: 
of ideas or real material substances. Thus at the very beginning 
we find Locke involved in a knot of equivocation. Next is the 
question : How does he set these elements to work ? 



86 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



19. Atomic Structures. — As we have seen, Locke divides sub- 
stances, when he considers them as real, into cognitive and incog- 
nitive, rather than into spiritual and material, although he be- 
lieves the latter is the correct division. The one is the logically 
necessary and intuitively known support, cause, or substratum of 
ideas from reflection; the other holds the same relation, aside 
from intuition, to ideas from sensation. The cognitive substance 
of finite beings is not diffused but exists as simple unitary soul- 
corpuscles — minds or spirits. God fills all space and is thus not 
even figuratively atomic. The world of finite intelligences is an 
atomic world, a world of cognitive corpuscles or atoms, simple and 
indivisible. Incognitive substance seems to be more diffused than 
cognitive substance, but even it, in the last analysis, probably ex- 
ists in the atomic or granular form. Locke appears to regard the 
external physical world as a mixed, though perhaps not dis- 
ordered, mass of atoms in motion. Physical phenomena are due 
in one way or another to the impact of these flying particles. 
Chemical and electrical changes seem to be entirely ignored by 
Locke. Locke's material world is the world of Newtonian physics. 
He accepts the omission theory of light. "And since the exten- 
sion, figure, number, and motion of bodies, of an observable big- 
ness, may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident 
some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the 
eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion, which produces 
these ideas we have of them in us."* "I think the perception we 
have of bodies at a distance from ours may be accounted for, as 
far as we are capable of understanding it, by the motion of par- 
ticles of matter coming from them and striking on our organs."f 
"In feeling and tasting there is immediate contact. Sound is not 
unintelligibly explained by a vibrating motion communicated to 
the medium, and the effluviums of the odorous bodies will, without 
any great difficulties, account for smells.":): "Besides the springy 
particles of pure air, the atmosphere is made up of several streams 
or minute particles of several sorts arising from the earth and the 

•II. viii. 12. 

t(Exam. of P. M.'s Opin. 9.) 

$(Ibid.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 37 



waters, and floating in the air, which is a fluid body, and though 
much finer and thinner, may be considered in respect to its fluidity 
to be like water, and so capable, like other liquors, of having 
heterogeneous particles floating in it."* After considering great 
masses of matter, the stars, planets, stones, plants, and animals, 
he says, "it may be now fit to consider what these sensible bodies 
are made of, and that is of inconceivably small bodies or atoms, 
out of whose various combinations bigger moleculae are made."-f 
"By the figure, bulk, texture, and motion of these small and insen* 
sible corpuscles," he concludes, "all the phenomena of bodies may 
be explained." Thus we see that Locke's universe, with the excep- 
tion of God, is atomic: material atoms, soul atoms, and ideas. 
Perception and knowledge is possible, for Locke, either on the 
assumption of interaction between cognitive and incognitive 
atoms, or on the assumption of some sort of meditation by God, as 
occasionalism or pre-established harmony. 

20. Occasionalism. Although Locke wrote a paper exposing 
the absurdity of seeing things in God, yet, in his Essay he has 
more than once expressed himself in a manner not inconsistent 
with the occasionalism of Malebranche. "Impressions made on 
the retina by rays x of light," he says, even in his examination of 
Malebranche's opinion, "I think I understand; and motions from 
thence continued to the brain may be conceived, and that these 
produce ideas in our minds, I am persuaded, but in a man- 
ner to me incomprehensible. This I can resolve only into the good 
pleasure of God, whose ways are past finding out. And, I think, 
I know it as well when I am told these are ideas that the motion of 
animal spirits, by a law established by God, produces in me, as 
when I am told they are ideas I see in God. The ideas, it is certain 
I have, and God both ways is the original cause of having them ; 
but the manner how I came by them, how it is I perceive, I confess 
I understand not ; though it be plain motion has to do in the pro- 
ducing of them : motion so modified, is appointed to be the cause 

•(Elements of Nat. Phil. ch. VI.) 
t (Ibid. ch. XII.) 



38 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



of our having them."f It would seem to follow from this that our 
ideas from sensation have co-ordinate substrata, two causes. The 
Cartesians emphasized the sole causality of God. Since Locke 
holds that we perceive only our ideas and that their cause is an 
I-know-not-what, it seems strange that he should introduce a 
realm of hypothetical material causes, which as causes he some- 
times admits are inconceivable, instead of making God the sole 
ground of our ideas. But admitting a world of material particles 
in motion, Locke has a parallelism on his hands. Certain motions 
among particles of the brain occur, and concomitant with these 
motions certain ideas occur in the mind. That an idea should 
produce a motion in a material body, or that the motion of a mate- 
rial body should produce an idea in the mind, seeing they are so 
different, he says, is inconceivable. "We are fain to quit our rea- 
son, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good 
pleasure of our Maker."f "We can attribute their connexion to 
nothing else but the arbitrary determination of that all-wise 
agent, who has made them to be, and to operate as they do, in a 
way wholly above our weak understanding to conceive/'J What 
this amounts to is, that in a purely hypothetical realm of things 
(which consist of something I know not what, and whose essence 
is unknowable, and whose existence is only inferred because of 
our repugnancy to uncaused ideas, which repugnancy might be 
and is equally satisfied by the assumption of God) there are 
assumed to be motions, which are unknowable, but which pre- 
cede or accompany certain of our ideas (which are the material 
objects of common sense), but which as the cause of these ideas 
are wholly inconceivable, so that in the end we must throw up our 
hands and say that these ideas are wholly due to the good pleasure 
of God. The difference between Locke and Malebranche seems to 
be one of words. But Locke, although he admits that a metaphysi- 
cal realm of unknowable particles in motion is useless, yet since 
iso much of his system is bound up with an assumption of this 
realm, and since he bases so much of his doctrine upon the casual 

flV. iii. 6. 
JIV. iii. 28. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 39 



efficacy of these unknowable motions, he retains it in spite of its 
absurdity. 

21. Interactionism. Locke may have harmonized his occa- 
sionalism, with his interactionism, in his own mind, by admitting 
that, ultimately, of course, God is the sole cause of whatever we 
experience, changes caused by one material thing acting upon an- 
other as well as ideas in our minds, but that on a less ultimate 
level of thought, not metaphysically but scientifically, i. e., psycho- 
logically, we can speak of motions in the brain causing ideas in the 
mind. Once getting over the difficulty, it would be easy to drop 
back to a more metaphysical way of regarding causes. But, how- 
ever he may have made peace with himself about this matter, he 
is clearly an interactionist. 

Each of the fundamental substances as agents has certain 
powers, which may be considered as of two kinds, active powers 
and passive powers. The one is that attribute or ability* by 
virtue of which an agent is able to initiate any change ; the other 
that by virtue of which it is able to suffer or transmit any change. 
God is supposed to be that being who has only active powers, 
/natter has only passive powers, while created spirits possess 
both active and passive powers. Leaving God out of the account, 
it seems clear that whatever finite beings experience is due to 
something that takes place in the unknown realm of substrata. 
In the case of ideas from sensation, simple ideas are the result of 
the meeting of the fundamental substances in their respective 
atomic forms. The material corpuscles must imprintf themselves 
upon the cognitive corpuscles, and the latter must somehow react 
upon the former. This must be so because, in this hypothetical 
realm which we have posited in order to explain the origin of 
ideas, there are just these two kinds of substances, and they have 
just the powers we have given them, and they are in the atomic 
form. From this interaction, then come two results, viz., simple 
ideas of sense and new changes or motions among material atoms. 
In harmony with these assumptions we must regard the cognitive 

•II. xxi. 16. 
til. xxix. 3. 



40 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



corpuscle as something very similar to a protoplasmic cell. If it 
is a purely spiritual substance, then, spiritual substance must 
possess plasticity and mobility. This seems rather materialistic, 
but if there is to be interaction how can we escape these assump- 
tions? Ideas of sense are, therefore, modifications or dents im- 
pressed upon the cognitive corpuscle, as upon a piece of wax,J 
are the only objects of cognition, i. e., the mind or soul perceives 
only its ideas. Not only can the soul initiate changes among the 
material atoms, but also, manifestly, among the dents or impres- 
sions on its plastic surface, and consequently on or within itself, 
i. e., it must change its form by presumably amoeboid movements. 
By these internal changes the soul thus re-distributes and re- 
arranges the dents imprinted upon it, in a way characteristic of 
its powers: reasoning, believing, knowing, etc. If the soul per- 
ceives its dents and likewise the changes taking place among them, 
it must perceive that dents are being made, hence simple ideas 
from reflection. The soul, then, knows its own surface, by means 
of the impressions upon it. Hence, cog ito ergo sum. 

Dents imprinted upon this plastic surface are simple ideas of 
sense; the folds or twists of this surface are simple ideas of re- 
flection; a system or correlated arrangement of these dents is a 
complex idea of sense; while the complex ideas of reflection are 
the more involved turmoils of the surface. It is clear why simple 
ideas are atomic, for atomic projectiles could make only atomic 
dents. The fact that these projectiles come in swarms does not 
lessen the simplicity and relative independence of the simple ideas. 

The soul corpuscle, however, is not naked. It has an enclosing 
ectoderm, the body. This ectoderm is composed of unknowable 
material atoms, and it partially protects the soul from the external 
bombardment. At the same time it is the material arrangement 
by means of which the soul acts upon or effects changes among the 
incognitive atoms of the external physical world. This ectoderm, 
moreover, is not entire, but has various soft spots, traditionally 

til. xxix. 3. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 41 



enumerated as five, through which external agitation reaches the 
soul. Each soft spot is of such a specific nature that only the 
bombardment of certain kinds of projectiles are able to make an 
impression upon the soul surface itself. The eye, not the eye of 
anatomy but that system of unknowable material particles which 
is the substratum of the eye of anatomy, is one of these soft spots ; 
and it is impervious to all projectiles except very minute light 
corpuscles of Newton's emission theory. Likewise with the other 
sense inlets. 

22. Ideas and Qualities of Bodies. It is essential in Locke's 
discussion of qualities that they should be carefully distinguished 
from ideas. In regard to the raw material of knowledge, i. e., 
simple ideas, the mind, he says, is wholly passive.* Simple ideas 
are nothing but "the effects of certain powers in things, fitted and 
ordained by God to produce such sensations [ideas] in us."f "It 
is true," he says, "the things producing in us these simple ideas, 
are but few of them denominated by us as if they were only the 
causes of them, but as if those ideas were real beings in them. 
For though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is signi- 
fied the power of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is denom- 
inated also heat and light; as if light and heat were really some- 
thing in the fire more than a power to excite these ideas in us, and 
therefore are called qualities in, or of the fire. But these being 
nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such ideas in us, I must in 
that sense be understood when I speak of secondary qualities, as 
being in things ; or of their ideas, as being the objects that excite 
them in us. Such ways of speaking, though accommodated to the 
vulgar notions, without which one can not be well understood, yet 
truly signify nothing but those powers which are in things to ex- 
cite certain sensations or ideas in us."J These powers that reside 
in things themselves are the qualities of these things themselves. 
"Thus a snowball having power to produce in us the ideas of 
white, cold and round, the power to produce these ideas in us, as 
they are in the snowball, I call qualities; and as they are sensa- 

♦II. xxx. 3. 
til. xxxi. 2. 
til. xxxi. 2. 



42 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



tions or perceptions in our understandings, I call them ideas, 
which ideas if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I 
would be understood to mean those qualities in the object which 
produce them in us."** 

We have now determined definitely that there are two ways of 
regarding things or bodies and their qualities. There is the com- 
mon-sense thing with its common-sense qualities, which is nothing 
but a complex idea with simple ideas. There is^the critical thing 
or thing itself with primary or critical qualities. The critical 
qualities are the powers of critical things to produce two kinds of 
common-sense qualities in common-sense things, or what is the 
same thing, the primary or critical qualities of things themselves 
have the power to produce two kinds of ideas, viz., primary and 
secondary ideas. When, therefore, we make a distinction between 
primary and secondary qualities of things, we can mean only pri- 
mary and secondary ideas. Critical things have only pri- 
mary or critical qualities. 

23. What are Secondary Critical Qualities? The primary 
qualities of bodies are, according to Locke, solidity, extension, 
existence, duration, figure, motion, or rest, and number. 
These are the qualities which material substance really has. 
These qualities do not depend upon the presence of a 
percipient mind. They are the qualities things in 
themselves have independent of any knowledge about them. 
Manifestly there are no secondary critical qualities, for 
secondary qualities, he says, such as colors, sounds, tastes, etc., 
are really not in the things themselves but are the "powers to 
produce various sensations (ideas) in us by their primary quali- 
ties, i. e., by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insen- 
sible parts."f But as we have just seen primary qualities of 
things themselves are just the powers they have of producing 
ideas in us. And since Locke has shown that there is no sense 
in speaking of one power having another powerj we are bound to 
conclude that things themselves do not have secondary qualities. 

**II. viii. 8. 
til. viii 10. 
til. xxl. 16. 






A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 43 



Suppose we take an example of a secondary idea. The simple 
secondary idea of blue, according to the emission theory, is pro- 
duced by a stream of exceedingly fine corpuscles, traveling at a 
terrific speed, and impinging on the retina, where they set up a 
motion. This motion is carried back to the brain along the optic 
nerve, where it causes the simple idea to arise. Red is produced 
in a like manner. The difference is that the red-producing cor- 
puscles are large and smooth compared with the blue-producing 
corpuscles. The latter may be also oblong instead of spherical. 
Since sunlight is composed of a mixture of all the various color- 
producing corpuscles, the question arises why do some objects re- 
flect red-producing corpuscles while others reflect blue-producing 
corpuscles? The proximate cause of the simple secondary idea 
in the complex idea of blue flower, is ex hypothesis the smallness 
and oblongness of the corpuscles that are reflected from the thing 
itself. Just this particular kind of corpuscles is reflected to the 
eye on account of the texture or surface of the flower itself. The 
red-producing corpuscles strike upon the petals just as the blue- 
producing corpuscles do, but owing to their size and sphericity, 
and to the texture of the petals, they are not reflected from its 
surface. Thus, the cause of the idea blue, is primarily the par- 
ticular form, size, shape, or number, etc., of the light corpuscles. 
But more remotely, the cause of only one or another kind of cor- 
puscles being reflected to the eye from an object is the particular 
texture, grain, or conformation of its minute parts. What then 
are the secondary critical qualities? They are the particular in- 
stances of the primary qualities. Red, let us say, is the effect of a 
spherical form, blue of an oblong form. Form itself is primary. 
No material substance exists without form. But the particular 
form is secondary. Motion is a primary quality. Heat, as Locke 
says, is an idea caused by the motions of the minute parts of 
water, for example, on the sensible parts of our hands. But 
whether the water will feel cold or hot, depends upon what kind 
of a motion is conducted to the brain. The secondary quality is 



44 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



the particular motion, say of so many vibrations per second. We 
can see now why primary and secondary ideas are so closely re- 
lated, why we can never see pure extension without some second- 
ary idea of color or touch. Secondary critical qualities, therefore, 
do exist in things themselves as the specific or particular instances 
of the primary qualities. Since bodies can not have motion, figure, 
extension, etc., without some particular motion, figure, extension, 
primary qualities are merely generalizations from secondary qual- 
ities. Secondary qualities are the particulars, and primary 
qualities are the universals. As Socrates would say, the argument 
is laughing at us. We began by regarding secondary qualities as 
derived from primary, and now we end by stating that primary 
qualities are merely generalizations from secondary. 

Since "all things that exist being particulars/'* and since "uni- 
versality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them 
particular in their existence ; even those words and ideas which in 
their signification are general," and "when therefore we quit par- 
ticulars, the generals that rest are only creatures, of our own 
making ; their nature being nothing but the capacity they are put 
into by the understanding, of signifying or representing many 
particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a rela- 
tion, that by the mind of man is added to them."f Primary criti- 
cal qualities are thus general ideas used as signs in the classifi- 
cation or sorting of secondary critical qualities. Secondary criti- 
cal qualities are the only qualities of things themselves that really 
exist. Primary critical qualities have only a nominal existence. 
Thus there are no ideas like critical qualities. The idea of figure 
has nothing like it in reality. "Figure is nothing but the termina- 
tion of colour."! Redness is more primary than extension. 

24. If Common-Sense Bodies Resemble Critical Bodies. 
Secondary common-sense qualities do not exist in things them- 
selves "otherwise than as anything is in its cause"§ Colors, sounds* 

*III. iii. 1. KElemts. of Nat. Phil. ch. X.) 

till. iii. 11. §n. xxiii. 9. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 45 



smells, and tastes, in so far as they exist in things themselves, 
exist as particular forms of primary qualities. They exist there, 
i. e., there is something in things themselves that corresponds to 
and is the cause of the secondary common-sense qualities, but 
what exists there does not resemble its effect in us. But on the 
other hand, in the case of the primary common-sense qualities, 
what exists in things themselves as the cause of primary ideas in 
us, does resemble these ideas. "The ideas of primary qualities of 
bodies," he says, "are resemblances of them, and their patterns do 
really exist in the bodies themselves ; but the ideas produced in us 
by these secondary qualities have no resemblance to them at all."* 
"The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of 
fire, or snow, are really in them, whether any one's senses perceive 
them or no, and therefore they may be called real qualities, be- 
cause they really exist in those bodies."f Now, what is it for one 
thing to be like another? One thing is like another in one partic- 
ular if they both have one identical quality. If an orange and a 
ball resemble each other in form, they both have the quality of 
sphericity. If two things resemble each other in all particulars 
except numerical identity, they have identical qualities. Two 
things are alike in so far as they possess identical qualities. If, 
therefore, common-sense bodies resemble the critical bodies which 
underlie them, they are identical in respect of these qualities. 
Common-sense primary ideas are, consequently, identical with 
critical primary qualities. Ideas of motion are motion, ideas of 
extension are extension. The common-sense body which has ideas 
of motion, extension, figure, etc., has the primary qualities 
of motion, extension, figure, etc. Now, a material body is that 
which has these primary qualities. Common-sense bodies, then, 
are material bodies. Since common-sense bodies are complex ideas 
in the mind, there are material bodies, with the qualities, of ex- 
tension, figure, motion, existence, etc., in the mind. The mind 
thus has within itself a material world which resembles an ex- 
ternal material world in respect of these primary qualities. This 

•II. viii. 15. 
til. viii. 17. 



46 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



internal material world differs from the external material world 
in that it possesses an indefinite number of secondary qualities, 
which do not resemble the secondary critical qualities which are 
their causes. Since ideas themselves are not substantial exist- 
ences, but the effects of the interaction between substantial exist- 
ences, we have the result that there exists as a complex object 
before the mind, a material world which has the qualities of 
extension, motion, figure, existence, etc., but which does not 
require a support or substratum for these qualities. But if we 
regard ideas, not as a tertium quid, but as parts or modifications 
of the soul substance itself, then we must conclude that the soul 
substance possesses all the qualities of material substance. Cog- 
nitive substance would thus include all substance, and the distinc- 
tion between cognitive and incognitive substance would be the 
distinction between the whole and the part. But this Locke for- 
bids us to do. We must therefore declare that the common-sense 
external world is a real material world without a substratum, or 
else that common-sense bodies do not resemble critical bodies in 
respect of their primary qualities. 

If a common-sense body can be said to be like a critical body 
only in so far as it possess the same or identical qualities, and if 
the likeness is greater in so far as the number of identical 
qualities is greater, it follows that common-sense bodies, whatever 
they are or however they are caused, possess these critical quali- 
ties in their own right. That they have these qualities is conse- 
quently no ground for supposing that they are caused or that they 
have an unknowable substratum. If we assert that they are 
caused or need a support, we must do so from some other ground 
than that of the mere presence of these qualities. But this is the 
very argument that Locke uses to prove a substratum. Hence it 
appears that he must give up his external real world as a useless 
assumption, or else deny that this real world has bodies similar to 
the bodies of the common-sense world. If he would do this, then 
he could not assert that the real external world has solidity, exist- 
ence, duration, figure, motion or rest, or number. His whole 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 47 



rationalistic scheme of atoms in motion, of sense organs and 
animal spirits, would go to pieces. Since existence is a primary 
quality, he could not assert that his hypothetical external world 
actually existed. It would be truly unknowable and incompre- 
hensible. Apparently the only escape from this dilemma is to 
abandon the doctrine of ideas and assert that the common-sense 
external world is the external world. 

25. The Ground of Distinction Between Primary and 
Secondary Qualities. It appears that Locke divided qualities 
of bodies into primary and secondary because he found that 
solidity, extension, figure, duration, motion or rest, number, and 
existence, are more important than the various sounds, colors, 
tastes, smells, temperatures, and feelings of hardness, softness, 
etc. But the importance of the former is that to a special natural 
science, viz., physics. The so-called primary qualities are impor- 
tant for physics on account of its special problems. It finds it 
convenient for its special purposes to make this distinction. When 
we come to examine the human understanding, surely we are not 
studying a branch of physics. It may be that from this standpoint 
the so-called secondary qualities are the most important. At least 
it is not evident that the special problems of physics should domin- 
ate our investigation. 

In trying to justify the assumption of the first importance of 
the qualities of solidity, figure, etc., Locke offers the following 
proof : "Qualities thus considered in bodies are, first, such as are 
utterly inseparable from the body, in what estate soever it be; 
such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force 
can be used upon it, it constantly keeps; and such as sense con- 
stantly finds in every particle of matter which has bulk enough to 
be perceived, and the mind finds inseparable from every particle 
of matter, though less than to make itself singly perceived by our 
senses: v. g., take a grain of wheat, divide it into two parts, each 
part still has solidity, extension, figure, and mobility; divide it 
again and it retains still the same qualities ; and so divide it on till 



48 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



the parts become insensible, they must retain still each of them 
all those qualities : for division (which is all that a mill, or pestle, 
or any other body does upon another, in reducing it to insensible 
parts) can never take away either solidity, figure, or mobility 
from any body, but only makes two or more distinct separate 
masses of matter of that which was but one before; all which 
distinct masses, reckoned as so many distinct bodies, after divi- 
sion, make a certain number. These I call original or primary 
qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple 
ideas in us, viz., solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and 
number."* Secondary qualities, he says, "are nothing in the ob- 
jects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations [ideas] 
in us by their primary qualities. " So far this is confusing and in- 
conclusive. A grain of wheat is a common-sense body with color 
as well as extension. The ideas of color, taste, and smell are in 
the complex idea, grain of wheat, as well as, and of as much im- 
portance as, the ideas of extension, mobility, or figure. When we 
reduce the grain of wheat to particles so fine as to be impercep- 
tible, the ideas of extension, mobility, and figure, cease to exist 
along with the ideas of color, taste, and smell. Since he himself 
says that figure is the limit of color, it is clear that when we get 
no idea of color we get no idea of figure. He can not, therefore, 
mean common-sense body, the complex idea, grain of wheat. But 
he can not be thinking of the critical body of his theory, for that, 
ex hypothesi, has only the so-called primary qualities. Here, his 
task is to show why some qualities are more important than 
others, and his theory must gain its plausibility from the results 
of this investigation and not contrariwise. 

In another passage, he says, "First the ideas of the primary 
qualities of things, which are discovered by our senses, and are in 
them even when we perceive them not ; such are the bulk, figure, 
number, situation, and motion of the parts of bodies, which are 
really in them, whether we take notice of them or not. Secondly, 
the sensible secondary qualities, which depending on these, are 
nothing but the powers those substances have to produce several 



V 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 49 



ideas in us by our senses ; which ideas are not in the things them- 
selves, otherwise than as anything is in its cause." f What con- 
stitutes importance for physics, apparently, is permanence. If a 
quality is an abiding quality it is important and primary. If its 
presence or condition depends upon the presence or condition of a 
percipient it is not important and primary for physics. If Locke 
is talking about the common-sense body, then, what he says 
amounts to this : among the various qualities of the common-sense 
body, there are some which persist whether we observe them or 
not ; the other qualities, which are the effects of these on us, cease 
to exist when we no longer observe them. But this implies that 
an idea persists when it is not an object before the mind, and that 
Locke denies. An alternative is that primary ideas and primary 
qualities are identical, and that the object under discussion is 
made partly of ideas and partly of real abiding qualities. But in 
that case, the mind would perceive something other than its ideas, 
which is also denied by Locke. Or, if primary qualities are ideas, 
then we have some ideas as the cause and support of others, and 
the occasion for an external world disappears. In fact, what he 
means by body here, is something that can be regarded either in 
a common-sense way or in a critical way, or half one and half the 
other. That is, it means anything he wants it to mean at any 
point in the argument. The only definite assertion is that some 
qualities depend upon a perceiving mind and that some others do 
not. 

The proof of this assertion appears to be this : The color, heat, 
or sound of a body changes with the surrounding conditions and 
its relation to the sense organs. When the light ceases to strike 
upon a piece of porphyry, for example, its colors vanish. Now, 
the bulk and figure of this piece remain the same, whether it is in 
the light or not, and whether we are looking at it or not. "Can 
any one think any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the 
presence or absence of light : and that those ideas of whiteness and 
redness are really in porphyry in the light, when it is plain it has 

tn. xxiii. 9. 



50 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



no colour in the dark? It has, indeed, such a configuration of 
particles, both night and day, as are apt by the rays of light re- 
bounding from some parts of that hard stone, to produce in us 
the idea of redness, and from others the idea of whiteness; but 
whiteness or redness are not in it at any time, but such a texture, 
that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us."* 

There are really two arguments here. One, that secondary 
qualities depend upon the presence and functioning of the sense 
organs, the other that secondary qualities are more unstable and 
fluent than the primary. Suppose we take the latter first. It is 
the argument from mechanical physics and does not necessarily 
imply that some secondary qualities are not always present with 
the primary. A quality that is important for physics is one that 
lends itself to mathematical formulation. The spatial qualities 
of bodies can be so formulated. By them events can be given a 
numerical statement and their occurrence predicted. The laws or 
ways in which they occur can be stated mathematically. The 
reason why secondary qualities are unimportant for physics, is not 
that a perceiving mind is necessary for their existence, but be- 
cause they are qualities such as can not be dealt with mathemati- 
cally. This, it will be admitted, is legitimate, if mathematical 
statement is our purpose. But Locke implies that this statement 
is equivalent to the statement that primary or spatial qualities 
are unconditioned. This is an unwarranted implication and is not 
demanded by mathematical physics. As Locke himself is forced 
to admit, the ideas of primary qualities are conditioned as much 
by the ideas of secondary qualities, as the secondary by the pri- 
mary. What physics is dealing with, is not the critical objects, 
but the common-sense objects. What it says is that the spatial 
ideas are more important for its purposes than the so-called sec- 
ondary ideas. But all the time it is dealing with the world we 
know, the world of ideas, in Locke's sense. In the case of a sen- 
sible object, it is the size, shape, or conformation of its parts that 
is important. Its color, odor, etc., can be neglected. Physics is 

•II. viii. 19. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 51 



interested in the length and the diameter of a vibrating string, 
not in its color or taste. But this is not saying that it has no color 
or taste, or that it is possible to have one without color or taste. 
The thing we are talking about is an experiencible object, one 
that we can see and touch. In the case of the insensible parts, the 
molecules or atoms, if they are said to exist at all, they exist such 
that, if our touch or sight were sensitive or acute enough, we could 
actually feel or see them. It is a mere accident that we do not. 
In lieu of seeing or touching them, we imagine ourselves seeing or 
touching them. That is, they are of the same nature as the larger 
objects. It is like looking at a page of fine print across the room. 
What I see is a rectangular gray patch on the white paper. I say 
that this gray patch is made up of three or four hundred black 
letters of definite shapes, i. e., I mean that if I were close enough 
to the page that is what I should see. These unseen letters are of 
the nature of Locke's ideas. Atoms and molecules are not the 
material substratum, but are the fine parts of our experienced 
world. They are in the same class with distant objects or with 
inaccessible objects, as the center of the earth. They are related 
to and coherent with what we do experience. Locke and the physi- 
cists can not say that primary ideas are unconditioned by second- 
ary ideas. As has been admitted there are no pure primary ideas. 
Extension is the extension of something seen or touched. What 
Locke appears to say is that primary qualities, the qualities of the 
real unknowable substrata which he thinks we are forced to as- 
sume, are unconditioned by secondary ideas. Or, although pri- 
mary qualities are like primary ideas, there are no secondary 
qualities like secondary ideas. The reason is that, since primary 
ideas are found to be important for mechanical physics while 
secondary ideas can be ignored, therefore real qualities of things 
themselves are like the primary ideas. This would be valid only in 
case primary ideas are unconditioned by secondary ideas. But 
since primary ideas are conditioned by secondary ideas, we are not 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



warranted in concluding that there are no secondary qualities like 
secondary ideas which condition the primary qualities. 

If those qualities which are important are the only ones belong- 
ing to real things, it remains to be shown why the purposes of 
physics are to be taken into consideration rather than the pur- 
poses of the musician or colorist, for example. To explain a 
musical composition or a painting in terms of vibrations of certain 
amplitudes and frequencies would hardly be allowed by the musi- 
cian or painter. Just as the physicist would have to admit that his 
primary qualities are not unconditioned by the others, so the 
musician would have to admit that certain spatial qualities are 
present as conditions of musical expression, but with the same 
right by which the physicist ignores certain qualities as unim- 
portant the musician can ignore these spatial qualities. The 
important qualities for him are other than these. When we con- 
sider all the various purposes and the peculiar qualities that are 
important for them, the innumerable practical and social pur- 
poses, the aesthetic, moral, and religious purposes, the singling 
out just those qualities which are important for mechanical 
physics as the only qualities belonging to material reality, seems 
to need more cogent argument than Locke has offered. It must 
be noted, however, that Locke is dealing only with the primary 
qualities of material substance. 

In his second argument by which he attempts to show that sec- 
ondary qualities are not qualities of things themselves because 
they are nothing but effects in us of the primary qualities, Locke 
feels that he has proved his thesis conclusively. Redness and 
whiteness are not in the porphyry, because these qualities change 
with the alterations of light. The piece of porphyry is unchanged 
whether it is in the light or not. It has its primary spatial 
qualities just the same. This reference to a change of illumina- 
tion, however, is not necessary to his argument. What he means 
is that a well-lighted piece of porphyry has neither redness nor 
whiteness unless there is a man there, with his eyes in normal 
condition, looking at it. It is the redness and whiteness of the 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 63 



porphyry that I am now observing under favorable conditions, 
and which I believe, as a common-sense observer, to be the quali- 
ties of the porphyry, that are not in the porphyry at all but are in 
me. Locke offers as a test case, the fact that when one hand is 
cold and the other hot, tepid water will feel hot to the cold hand 
and cold to the hot hand. "Ideas being thus distinguished and 
understood, we may be able to give an account how the same 
water, at the same time, may produce the ideas of cold by one hand 
and heat by the other; whereas it is impossible that the same 
water, if those ideas are really in it [are we to imply that primary 
ideas are in it ?] , should at the same time be both hot and cold : for 
if we imagine warmth, as it is in our hands, to be nothing but a 
certain sort and degree of motion in the minute particles of our 
nerves or animal spirits, we may understand how it is possible that 
the same water may, at the same time produce the sensations of 
heat in one hand, and cold in the other; which yet figure never 
does, that never producing the idea of a square by one hand, 
which has produced the idea of globe by the other."* There is 
another experiment in perception known to Aristotle and common 
among school children of our day which from its simplicity might 
well have been known to Locke. Take the two hands. If we hold 
a small marble or a pea between the thumb and finger of one hand 
we get the idea of a primary quality, number. We feel one 
marble. If we touch the crossed fingers of the other hand with 
the same marble we get the idea of two marbles from that hand. 
At one and the same time, the same object gives us the primary 
idea of one-ness from one hand and of two-ness from the other. 
In general, Locke's test for the permanence of spatial qualities 
is that they are not subject to illusions. His assumption is that 
those qualities which change with the varying conditions of obser- 
vation are secondary, those that do not are primary. A very 
elementary knowledge of sense illusion, however, shows that the 
so-called primary qualities are quite as subject to illusion as the 
secondary. Without going into a modern discussion of illusion 
•n. via. 21. 



54 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



this is very evident. We can cite from Locke himself the illusory 
character of certain ideas of primary qualities. "When we set 
before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform color, v. g., gold, 
alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in 
our mind is of a flat circle variously shadowed, with several de- 
grees of light and brightness coming to our eyes."f We judge this 
flat circle to be a spherical body evidently by correlating it with 
our ideas from touch. The illusion of a painting, he implies, is 
due to this customary judgment. That sight does not give us the 
third dimension he admits in his answer to Molineaux's problem 
of the blind man who regains his sight. He is of the opinion, he 
says, "that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with 
certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he 
only saw them."t In criticising Malebranche's assertion about 
our perception of a cube that "we see all its sides equal," he says, 
"This, I think, is a mistake; and I have in another place shown 
how the idea we have of a regular solid, is not the true idea of that 
solid, but such an one by custom (as the name of it goes), seems 
to excite our judgment to form such an one."f There is an illusion 
of motion, which is not given by Locke, but which requires no 
erudition or elaborate apparatus. The perception of motion is 
usually attributed to a movement of the image on the retina. This 
occurs and we have the perception of movement, whether the eye 
is stationary and the object moving, or whether the object is sta- 
tionary and the eye quickly moving. But when one sights down 
a gun barrel at a distant object and then without moving the eye 
focusses the eye on the rear sight, the object is seen to move. 
Evidently this perception of movement is due to a judgment, based 
probably on the movement of the closed eye. Ideas 
of primary qualities from sight, can not therefore be said to 
resemble the primary qualities themselves. The eye is subject 
to illusions of size, form, number, motion, and solidity. Since the 
senses of hearing and taste and smell are likewise subject to illu- 
sion, and since Locke does not regard them as principal sources 
tn. ix. 8. 

tabid.) 

t(Exam. of P. M.'s Opin. 12.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 55 



of our primary ideas,* we have only the sense of touch whereby 
we can get true ideas of primary qualities. 

If we give up all the senses but touch by what criterion are 
we to judge it? If the eye deludes us in regard to the color and 
shape of the piece of porphyry before us, how do we know that 
touch is not doing the same thing? When an old soldier with his 
leg amputated feels his lost foot extended in space, how is he going 
to deny the reliability of his idea ? What about the primary idea 
of existence? In the case of vivid dreams and hallucinations the 
case for touch seems to fall to pieces. Reality, therefore, can not 
be sought in primary spatial qualities. 

26. The Hopeless Confusion of Locke's Thought. The 
seeming plausibility of Locke's argument for primary qualities 
is due to his confusion of the common-sense body with his hypo- 
thetical or "real" body, and of primary ideas with primary quali- 
ties. He says, "I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion 
into natural philosophy, it being necessary in our present inquiry 
to distinguish the primary and real qualities of bodies, which are 
always in them (viz., solidity, figure, number, and motion or rest; 
and are sometimes perceived by us, viz., when the bodies they are 
in are big enough singly to be discerned) from the secondary and 
imputed qualities, which are but the powers of several combina- 
tions of those primary ones, when they operate, without being 
distinctly discerned; whereby we may also come to know what 
ideas are, and what they are not, resemblances of something really 
existing in the bodies we denominate from them."f This sen- 
tence is eloquent of the confusion into which he has fallen. He 
is talking about "real" bodies, the things themselves, not complex 
ideas. He says these real bodies have in them real primary qual- 
ities. We are not concerned at present in denying this statement. 
Let us suppose there are such real bodies, and that their real 
qualities are solidity, extension, figure, etc. Now he goes on to 
say that under ordinary conditions, i. e., when the bodies are not 
of microscopic dimensions or less, these primary qualities are 

•II. xiii. 2. 
til. viii. 22. 



56 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



perceived by us. He has taught us before that primary qualities 
are not and from their nature can not be perceived by us. What- 
soever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of 
perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the 
power to produce any idea in our mind I call quality of the subject 
wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to 
produce in us ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to pro- 
duce those ideas in us, as they are in the snowball, I call qualities ; 
and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, 
I call them ideas."* Round, which is a primary idea in the com- 
plex idea, snowball, is produced in us by a power in the real snow- 
ball. This power is the real primary quality residing in the thing 
itself. The most that can be said for the primary idea is that it is 
like the primary quality. Now he says that these primary qual- 
ities are perceived by us. In another place, he says, in most sen- 
sible things "we can not avoid observing their sensible qualities, 
nay, their very substances, to be in a continual flux."$ But since 
whatever is an object when a man thinks is an idea, primary qual- 
ities are, sometimes at least, ideas. Thus primary qualities are 
and can not be ideas. We recall that he says, "which ideas, if I 
speak of sometimes as the things themselves, I would be under- 
stood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them 
in us," and in another place we find him saying "powers" and 
"substance" when he means simple ideas and complex ideas, as 
"therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers among simple 
ideas, which make the complex ones of the sorts of substances; 
though these powers, considered in themselves, are truly complex 
ideas. And in their looser sense I crave leave to be understood, 
when I name any of these potentialities among the simple ideas 
which we collect in our minds, when we think of particular sub- 
stances.":!: Let us take him at his word. In the sentence at the 
beginning of this paragraph, he speaks of real qualities being per- 
ceived by us. Evidently, therefore, according to the indulgence 
he allows himself, whereby words are all things to all men, we can 

•II. viii. 8. 
til. xxi. 4. 
tn. xxiii. 7. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 67 



interpret the sentence in question as meaning that there are pri- 
mary ideas in common-sense bodies or complex ideas, which are 
perceived by us. The "sometimes" now becomes anomalous. Are 
there primary ideas which are not objects perceived ? What other 
meaning can be given to the word? But an idea is that which is 
an immediate object. We are forced to conclude that an idea is 
and may not be an immediate object before the mind. But to con- 
tinue the substitution of "ideas" for "qualities" in the sentence in 
question, we see that secondary and imputed ideas are but the 
powers of several combinations of those primary ones. Primary 
ideas are, consequently, powers of complex ideas to produce in us 
secondary ideas. Complex ideas, thus, are made up only of pri- 
mary ideas; secondary ideas are the product of complex ideas. 
But, on the other hand, we have learned that complex ideas are 
just those constellations of ideas of whatever sort which come 
together, concomitantly or serially. Secondary ideas are, part of 
that which is their cause. Consequently, they are and are not 
primary. Again, what can Locke mean by speaking of primary 
qualities operating "without being distinctly discerned?" If he 
means the qualities of things themselves which are the causes of 
ideas in us they are not only not distinctly discerned but not dis- 
cerned at all. But if he means primary ideas, then some ideas 
operate. But ideas are nothing but effects in us. Therefore some 
ideas are causes which are nothing but effects. Thus Locke comes 
to the conclusion of his sentence, "whereby we may also come to 
know what ideas are, and what are not, resemblances of some- 
thing really existing in the bodies we denominate from them." It 
is clear that we can not substitute here. He implies that he has 
shown that some ideas resemble and that some do not resemble the 
qualities in things themselves which are their causes. If we sub- 
stituted as before Locke would be saying that some ideas resemble 
other ideas and that some ideas do not. At this point Locke's 
empiricism and rationalism meet and result in a nest of an- 



6S A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



tinomies. Aside from the truth or falsity of anything he says, it 
is impossible to give a coherent statement to his doctrine of pri- 
mary and secondary qualities. The most serious charge that can 
be brought against him at this point is that, expressly and with 
malice prepense, he gives himself the license to say one thing and 
mean another. 

27. The Origin of Primary Ideas. Locke says, as we have 
seen, that secondary qualities exist in things themselves only in 
so far as anything exists in its cause. By this he admits that 
there is something in things themselves corresponding to, but not 
resembling, secondary common-sense qualities. If we assume 
some cognitive being who is capable of perceiving things them- 
selves with their primary or real qualities, as probably Locke's 
angels or as God apprehends them, that being would apprehend 
that a body to which man imputes, or which is the cause of, red- 
ness, is different from a body to which man imputes blueness. He 
would perceive a difference in the surface, texture, or coagmenta- 
tion of parts. Locke could not escape this conclusion. We can 
not, even theoretically, say that two bodies are identical in respect 
of their primary qualities, but differ in respect of their secondary 
common-sense qualities. The very fact that two bodies differ in 
respect of their secondary or imputed qualities, shows, prima 
facie, that there are powers in the bodies themselves adequate to 
these effects. His doctrine of the cause of ideas depends upon this. 
But this forces us to our former conclusion that the powers which 
produce secondary common-sense qualities in us, are the particular 
kinds of primary qualities. Primary qualities as such have only 
nominal existence. If a real body produces any idea in us, it does 
so by virtue of its particular powers. How is it possible, we may 
ask, for primary ideas to arise? They could arise only through 
that which causes secondary ideas. But this cause seems to be 
exhausted in producing secondary ideas. Whence comes this addi- 
tional effect? The only mode in which such additional effects 
could exist would be as particular extensions, forms, motions, etc. 
General ideas, as he maintains, are abstractions. There would be 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 59 



in the mind, when some real body produced ideas in us, distinct 
ideas of color, taste, smell, etc., as the case may be, and, in addi- 
tion, distinct ideas of particular extension, figure, motion, etc. 
The cause of secondary ideas would thus be the cause of primary 
ideas. Since primary ideas have no sense inlets of their own, 'they 
have to come in more or less freely, through the inlets of secondary 
ideas. But when I look at a red rose, the complex idea in my 
mind, I see clearly, according to the corpuscular theory of light, 
that that which causes the distinct idea redness, is not the cause 
of the particular idea of extension or figure I perceive. I get the 
same idea of redness whether I look at the whole rose, at a single 
petal, or a part of a petal. The cause of the idea of redness, is, 
by the theory, due to the fine parts of the flower, and not to its 
gross outlines. How do these gross outlines get before the mind 
on the backs of the configuration of the fine parts? If we take 
Locke's assertion that figure is the limit of color, in a visual object, 
then we regard the real body as having a gross extensity and form 
made up of finer extensities and forms, which fine extensities and 
forms are the cause of the secondary ideas. The gross parts are 
nothing but the aggregation of the fine parts. But the fine parts 
produce ideas which are not like them. How, then, can any aggre- 
ation of fine parts produce an idea that is like it? At this point 
on the real petal the fine parts produce the idea of redness, at 
other points the fine parts do the same. How can the summation 
of effects produce anything but just redness? Locke might say 
that the addition of effects would be observed by the mind as more 
and more, and hence the idea of voluminousness and extension. 
But this, if true, is introspective evidence. There is nothing in his 
doctrine to show why the powers which produce secondary ideas 
at the same time produce primary ideas. He himself says it is 
inconceivable how primary qualities of bodies produce secondary 
ideas in us so unlike their causes. It is likewise inconceivable, 
if they do, how they could produce anything else. But when Locke 



60 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



speaks of the cause of primary and secondary ideas, he seems to 
regard the effect of the fine parts of the body as secondary ideas, 
and the body as an extended whole as the cause of primary ideas. 
He seems to regard the cause of primary ideas as in some way en- 
tirely distinct from the cause of secondary ideas. But as we see, 
the cause of secondary ideas has the load to carry. Besides pro- 
ducing secondary ideas, it must produce various other primary 
ideas than extension. In the case of the red rose, besides the 
particular extension and figure, it must produce the idea of dura- 
tion, rest or motion, solidity, and more remarkable than all, the 
idea of existence. But the existence of what, since there are no 
universals? Existence of the body with its primary powers, 
which powers produce ideas in us. But how the quality of exist- 
ence can produce the idea of existence is the most incomprehensi- 
ble of all Locke's assumptions. Why does the idea of real existence 
attach itself just to the primary ideas? Why does it attach itself 
to itself? Moreover, how can we distinguish dreams, hallucina- 
tions, or everyday illusions, from reality? If we say false judg- 
ment, then reality is perceived by true judgment and the idea of 
real existence is a product of judgment, and not an effect in us 
like the ideas of red or sweet, or particular form. Locks leaves 
unexplained, therefore, the origin of primary ideas. 

28. Primary Qualities of Mind. — In the case of primary qual- 
ities of mind, there are peculiarities not found in the case of pri- 
mary qualities of material bodies. In the first place the mind is an 
"intermediary" or active-passive substance. It may be conjectured, 
he says, that "Pure spirit, viz., God, is only active ; pure matter is 
only passive; those things that are both active and passive, we 
may judge to partake of both."* The ideas from reflection are 
produced in the mind by itself. The mind perceives its own pro- 
cesses. These processes are active or self -caused processes and 
receptive processes. In time, the receptive processes come first. 
"In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations, about the 
ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 61 



ideas, which I call ideas from reflection." Again there are no 
sense organs or inlets for ideas from reflection. Nor does the 
distinction between primary and secondary qualities, if there be 
such a distinction, rest upon the same ground as the same distinc- 
tion with respect to those of material bodies. In regard to the 
primary ideas which are common to minds and material bodies, the 
way in which these qualities produce ideas in us is necessarily 
different, but the idea is the same. In the case of the mind we 
have a new application of immediate apprehension. Instead of 
being applied only to ideas, it is applied, in respect of existence 
for example, to the quality itself. There are other ideas, as that 
of relation, which present unique problems. The status of con- 
viction, beliefs, and revelation is also of peculiar importance. In 
the first place, what are the qualities of mind? 

The original causes of our ideas from reflection, Locke says, 
are "perceptivity, or the power of perception or thinking ; motiv- 
ity, or the power of moving," or "the power of beinning or stop- 
ping several thoughts or motions,"* and existence, duration, and 
number, f The primary ideas corresponding to these powers of 
the mind are perception, volition, existence, duration, and number. 
It is thus seen that the mind has only two distinctive primary 
powers. "The ideas we have belonging and peculiar to spirit are 
thinking and will, or a power of putting body into motion by 
thought, and, which is consequent to it, liberty. For as body can 
not but communicate its motion by impulse to another body, which 
it meets with at rest, so the mind can put bodies into motion, or 
forbear to do so, as it pleases."J Motivity is a power of the mind 
not only to cause movements among material things but to move 
the mind itself in space. "There is no reason why it should be 
thought strange, that I make mobility belong to the spirit: for 
having no other idea of motion but change of distance with other 
beings that are considered as at rest, — and finding that spirits, 
as well as bodies, can not operate but where they are, and that 
spirits do operate at several times in several places, — I can not 

•n. xxili. 80. 
til. xxl. 7*. 
ill. xxili. 18. 



C2 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



but attribute change of place to all finite spirits (for of the in- 
finite spirit I speak not here). For my soul being a real being, 
as well as my body, is certainly capable of changing distance with 
any other body, or being, as body itself, and so is capable of 
motion. "§ The mind thus considered is an intermediate sub- 
stance between God and matter, or at least partaking of the 
powers both of pure spirit and pure matter. Although Locke 
uses thinking and perceptivity as equivalent, it seems possible 
that the former is a more inclusive term, meaning whatever goes 
on in the mind. "Believing, doubting, intending, fearing, hoping ; 
all which are but the several modes of thinking/ ' But perception 
as we shall see is regarded by Locke as a passive power, while 
thinking seems for him to include volition or active power. 
Thinking, however, is not used by him to include the power to 
move our bodies. Thinking, and volition seem to partially over- 
lap, but perception and volition do not. 

29. Secondary Qualities of Mind. Primary qualities of 
bodies are distinguished from secondary qualities for two reasons, 
as we saw : the former are more important for mechanical physics, 
and they do not depend upon the presence of a percipient being. 
Secondary qualities of bodies are made up of or are the specific 
instances of the primary. There is no conceivable connection be- 
tween the primary quality and secondary idea. Does or can Locke 
make this distinction with respect to the qualities of mind ? If we 
were to treat mind as we do matter, the symmetrical way would 
be to study, not ourselves but other minds. But of these, he says, 
"we have no ideas but what we draw from that of our own, by 
reflecting on the operations of our own souls within us, as far as 
they can come within our observation."! "That there are minds 
and thinking beings in other men as well as himself, every man 
has a reason from their words and actions, to be satisfied."J 
Other minds produce no ideas in us. We have then only ourselves 
to observe in determining the qualities of mind. Locke, however, 
leaves us in the dark about secondary qualities, although from his 

§11. xxili. 19. 
tlV. ili. 17. 
tW. iii. 27. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 63 



precise designation of primary qualities it is to be inferred 
that there are secondary qualities. He seems to include secondary 
ideas by classifying all the ideas from reflection under one of 
the five primary ideas. Believing, doubting, fearing, knowing, 
loving, hating, and the like are just kinds of perceptions or think- 
ing. One should think that ideas of emotion would be most suit- 
ably classed as secondary, either from perception or volition, but 
he does not do it. I may perceive that I fear or hate, but fearing 
or hating is not perceiving. Locke could say, just as he does in 
the other case, that it is inconceivable how certain combinations 
of perceptivity, motivity, existence, duration, and number pro- 
duce these ideas of emotion in us, but that God has ordained that 
such emotions be annexed to such combinations. It being as in- 
conceivable how the perceiving of a bear can cause the idea of 
fear, as how a certain texture of a flower petal can cause the idea 
of blue. Since emotions are fleeting, while perceptivity, motivity, 
etc., we have always, whether we have ideas or not, it would seem 
that emotions are the most suitable ideas from reflection to be re- 
garded as secondary. The same inconsistencies would develop 
here as in the other case, but it would make his discussion more 
symmetrical. 

The ideas of pleasure and pain are received according to Locke, 
both from sensation and reflection.* In the case of pleasure and 
pain from sensation, it is clear that they are secondary ideas due 
to the primary qualities of material bodies, as in cuts, burns, and 
bruises. But Locke insists these ideas are caused also by reflec- 
tion. They must therefore be secondary. Thus, ideas of love, 
hate, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, anger, despair, and envy, may be 
secondary ideas from reflection, depending on and caused by some 
conformation or combination of perceptivity, motivity, existence, 
duration, and number. 

If we suppose these ideas of emotion, which Locke treats gen- 
erally as modes of pleasure and pain,f to be the same, whether 
caused by primary qualities of material bodies or of minds, the 

•II. XX. vii.. 

tn. xx. 



64 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



question arises how two such diverse causes can produce the same 
effects. Locke does not answer this question except in so far as to 
say that the infinitely wise Author of our being has annexed these 
ideas "to almost all our ideas." As to pleasure, "if this were 
wholly separated from all our outward sensations and inward 
thoughts, we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action 
to another ; negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so we 
sJiould neither stir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our 
thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, without any direction 
or design; and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded 
shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without 
attending to them."! "Pain has the same efficiency and use to set 
us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our 
faculties to avoid that, as to pursue this."f The part in which 
we are interested here is not the divine purpose in the presence 
of ideas of pleasure and pain, but that such ideas are annexed, as 
an effect to a cause, to the primary qualities both of mind and 
matter. Locke goes on to say, "only this is worth our considera- 
tion, that pain is often produced by the same objects and ideas 
that produce pleasure in us." Ignoring this illegitimate use of 
"ideas," it must be admitted that experience furnishes some justi- 
fication for the assertion. The same degree of heat may be either 
pleasant or unpleasant, the same intellectual activity may likewise 
bring pleasure or pain. This peculiarity can better be explained 
in the realm of sense experience than in that of reflection. We 
can account for the first by considering the condition and office 
of the sense organs, but in ideas from reflection there are no sense 
organs. How, for example, can a certain complex idea from re- 
flection, an ideal of life, at one time give pleasure and at another 
pain? There would seem to be an immediate relation of acquaint- 
ance in each case, and no room for any disquieting factor to enter. 
If we may say that the ideal fits into our life and personality at 
one time, but after we have developed, that there is no longer 
harmony, then we have adopted a new cause for ideas of pleasure 

ill. vii. s. 
til. vii. 4. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 65 



and pain. But without some such explanation, we must fall back 
on the good pleasure of God. But however we try to explain their 
presence and their numerous modes, the explanation that fits the 
ideas of pleasure and pain from sensation will not fit those from 
reflection. We are left with mystery. Secondary ideas from re- 
flection are thus treated by Locke with more vagueness, if that 
be possible, than secondary ideas from sensation. 

30. Organs of Internal Sense. Locke says, "I pretend not 
to teach, but to inquire, and therefore can not but confess here 
again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages 
that I can find of Knowledge to the understanding. These alone, 
as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into 
this dark room : for methinks the understanding is not much un- 
like a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening 
left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things 
without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but 
stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would 
very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to 
all objects of sight and the ideas of them."* It is not unlikely that 
Locke was very familiar with the fact that in a darkened room a 
small aperture in the blind will allow images of outside objects to 
be projected against the walls. He doubtless knew the essential 
facts of a camera obscura, and it is certain he knew of retinal 
images. 

Although this figure of the dark-room illustrates the entrance 
of ideas from sensation it is confusing when applied to ideas from 
reflection. Locke seems to put internal and external sense on an 
equality. They are both inlets or posterns or windows through 
which ideas enter. Each furnishes the mind with a unique kind 
of ideas. The dark-room has two chinks; through one come re- 
semblances or representations of external material objects; 
through the other representations of the mind's own processes. 
The first is evidently the sense organs and the brain with its 
afferent connections. What is the second chink? To take the il- 
•n. xi. 17. 



66 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



lustration as it stands there would have to be an external-internal 
world of causes for ideas from reflection. The mind would be 
the passive observer for both kinds of ideas. The mind as ob- 
server would need only its white paper passivity ; for the so-called 
powers of mind would have to be given to those hypothetical ob- 
jects in this external-internal world. Our repugnancy to uncaused 
ideas would demand this. This realm of reflection would be the 
proper place to put the substratum for memories and fancies. We 
should thus have three realms. The external world, the internal 
world, and the world of ideas. The substratum for ideas of either 
sort would be an I-know-not-what. The mind, instead of being 
illustrated as a protoplasmic cell with a protecting ectoderm, 
would have to be regarded as a link or isthmus between the two 
realms of reality like the neck of an hour-glass. If we imagine 
this neck to be a dark cabinet with an opening on either side for 
the entrance of the two kinds of ideas from their respective 
realms, we have a beautifully symmetrical illustration. 

It is evident that ideas from reflection can not be illustrated 
thus. Since ideas from reflection are representations of the 
mind's own processes, the mind has to get out of itself and observe 
itself at work. In order to illustrate this by means of a dark- 
room and a chink, it would be necessary to have two dark cabinets, 
the internal sense cabinet adjoining the external sense cabinet 
with an opening into it, by means of which representations or 
images of what went on in the external sense cabinet might be 
produced in the other. We should thus have one external world 
and two cabinets for the reception and elaboration of its influ- 
ences. This seems to illustrate Locke's saying, that we do not 
perceive without perceiving that we perceive. We must neces- 
sarily perceive that we perceive that we perceive. Hence an in- 
definite regress. Supposing that this is not absurd, it remains to 
be explained what and where this reflective peep-hole is. But 
Locke gives us no account of internal sense organs. Presumably 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 67 



there are none. But since Locke gives so much importance to our 
external sense organs, and since he speaks of sensation and re- 
flection as the two sources of all our ideas, we seem justified in 
looking for internal sense organs; and it is surely against his 
doctrine that we do not find them. 

It seems that the mind perceives immediately its own processes, 
i. e., it is self-conscious. I perceive that I perceive. Is it possible 
to perceive that I do not perceive? What he says about ideas 
from privative causes* leads us to suppose that it is possible. His 
general position seems to demand it. If the mind can some way 
observe what is going on in the dark-room, it must likewise ob- 
serve that there is nothing going on there when the senses are 
closed. It is thus theoretically possible, according to this position, 
for the mind to observe itself in that original blank state, the 
tabula rasa. But this is contradictory; for then the tabula rasa 
would have on it "this is a tabula rasa." It is clear that the mind 
can not perceive that it does not perceive. Ideas from privative 
causes must be based upon something positive. There must be 
some idea representative of some reality, which is the means by 
which ideas of reflection come to be, the idea of something like a 
sense organ. We must ask, does "the eye of the mind" have any 
significance? Locke seems to regard the mind's eye as that idea 
from reflection, active attention, i. e., the empirical system of 
ideas, or self, which determintes and dominates what ideas shall 
be objects. For example, he says, "How, as it were in an instant, 
do our minds with one glance see all the parts of a demonstra- 
tion."! Now, since the ideas of the external sense organs come in 
as other ideas do, it is nothing against the validity of our judg- 
ment that they are caused by real sense organs, so we can say 
that although the idea of attention comes in as other ideas from 
reflection, that fact does not hinder it from being representative 
of some real mind's eye. Locke seems to regard the mind as act- 
ing as a whole in reflection, hence the mind must be its own 
reflective sense organ. Just as the real bodily sense organs do not 
"see" external objects but are the means of those objects produc- 

•II. viii. 1-6. 

tn. lx. 10. 



6S A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



ing those ideas in us, so the mind does not "see" itself ; but in its 
capacity of a sense organ produces not only ideas of itself in itself, 
i. e., the unity, system, and coherence among ideas, but also dis- 
tinctive ideas of its own processes, perception, volition, believing, 
knowing, etc., which appear as acts of the empirical self, just as 
seeing, hearing, etc., appear as acts of the ideas of bodily sense 

organs. 

31. Perceptivity and Motivity. Locke is often understood 
as teaching that the mind is at first purely passive. This is un- 
warranted. Perceptivity and motivity, or perception and volition, 
are primary qualities or powers of mind, and the distinctive pri- 
mary qualities. Being primary they are both present in experi- 
ence, even while the mind is being furnished. If perceptivity is, 
as Locke says, "the first step and degree towards knowledge, and 
the inlet of all materials of it,"* it is first in a logical sense not a 
chronological one, although Locke inconsistently mentions the 
temporal priority of these materials. The mind being a passive- 
active being, it can not be in time at first passive and later active. 
His purpose in treating the mind first as a tabula rasa, is, ob- 
viously, that he can not treat all qualities of the mind at once, and 
that since in a logical order the materials of knowledge must be 
furnished before knowledge is possible, the mind in, its passive 
capacity should be regarded first. 

We do not simply perceive or merely act, but we think, which 
includes both. Thinking is that which takes place in the mind as 
a matter of fact. Perception as well as volition are abstractions. 
They are the results of an analysis of thinking. "Perception, as it 
is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our ideas ; so it i3 
the first and simplest idea we get from reflection, and is by some 
called thinking in general. Though thinking, in the propriety of 
the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation in the mind 
about its ideas, wherein the mind is active; where it, with some 
degree of voluntary attention, considers anything. For in bare 
perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive ; and what 
*n. ix. is. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 6& 



it perceives, it can not avoid perceiving."* But as Locke points 
out the mind may be engrossed in some object to the exclusion of 
all other ideas, so the mind by its quality of motivity may modify 
if not wholly determine what ideas it shall perceive. "How often 
may a man observe in himself, that whilst his mind is intently em- 
ployed in the contemplation of some objects, and curiously sur- 
veying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions 
of sounding bodies made upon the organ of hearing with the same 
alteration that uses to be for the producing of sound. A sufficient 
impulse there may be on the organ ; but if not reaching the obser- 
vation of the mind, there follows no perception ; and though the 
motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, 
yet no sound is heard. Want of sensation, in this case, is not 
through any defect in the organ, or that the man's ears are less 
affected than at other times when he does hear: but that which 
uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the usual organ, 
not being taken notice of in the understanding, and so imprinting 
no idea in the mind, there follows no sensation."f It would appear 
that the mind is, as a matter of fact, not merely a tabula rasa. 
"The perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what 
motion is to the body, not its essence, but one of its operations."! 
"Hence it is probable that thinking is the action, not the essence 
of the soul."§ Logically perception or perceptivity, is purely 
passive and volition or motivity is purely active. Thinking is 
both. Perceptivity and motivity are qualities the mind has from 
the very first. 

32. Active and Passive Powers of Mind as Actually In- 
separable.. Perception is the same thing as "having ideas."** 
"What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on 
what he does himself, what he sees, hears, feels, etc., or thinks, 
than by any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes 
in his own mind, can not miss it, and if he does not reflect, all the 
words in the world can not make him have any notion of it."f t 
Locke speaks of ideas being "introduced," "imprinted," "pro- 

•II. lx. 1. §11. xix. 4. 

til. lx. 4. "II. i. 9. 

III. 1. 10. ttll. lx. 2. 



70 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



duced," "conveyed in," "received." The mind is "furnished" with 
ideas; they "happen" to it; they are brought before it; they are 
its objects. In having ideas, Locke appears to teach that the mind 
is passive. This plastic power or quality is perception. Percep- 
tion qua perception is passive. It is a sequacious power. In 
treating the mind thus in respect of one of its qualities, Locke is 
abstracting. The mind is not, according to Locke, purely passive 
in perception. It is both active and passive, not one or the other. 
"If our knowledge were altogether necessary, all men's knowledge 
would not only be alike, but every man would know all that is 
knowable : and if it were wholly voluntary, some men so little re- 
gard or value it, that they would have extreme little or none at all. 
Men that have senses can not choose but receive some ideas by 
them ; and if they have memory, they cannot but retain some of 
them; and if they have any distinguishing faculty, can not but 
perceive the agreement or disagreement of some of them one with 
another : as he that has eyes, if he will open them day by day, can 
not but see some objects, and perceive a difference in them. But 
though a man with his eyes open in the light, can not but see, yet 
there be certain objects, which he may choose whether he will turn 
his eyes to ; there may be in his reach a book containing pictures 
and discourses, capable to delight and instruct him, which yet he 
may never have the will to open, never take the pains to look 
into."* Although we can not know things as we please, yet there 
is this voluntary element in all that we know. As John Burroughs 
says, "You must have the bird in your heart before you can find 
it in the bush." Locke is perfectly justified in treating the mind 
in respect of its passive power, if by that he thinks he can get a 
better understanding of the mind. But if by this procedure we 
are led to judge that the mind, as a matter of fact, is passively 
furnished with its ideas, our conclusion is erroneous. 

In the case of ideas from reflection the mind is not passively 
furnished, that is evident. The mind itself produces these ideas 

•IV. xiii. 1. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 71 



and its passivity can not be divorced from its activity. Just what 
happens, say, when the mind has the simple idea of perception? 
There is no awareness of the eternal object, the mind, or the im- 
pression, as such. The idea of perception is produced by the mind 
itself in itself. No external object can directly produce an idea 
of perception. The mind itself is the agent or organ of this pro- 
duction. What is it that is produced? The conscious correlate 
of the mind is the empirical self, the coherent system of all the 
ideas of whatever sort. What appears is this empirical self in 
relation to some idea from sensation. This relation, with its 
terms is the idea of perception. It may be thought that Locke 
teaches that in the case of simple ideas from sensation the mind 
is so far purely passive. Not so. According to Locke we never 
get any simple ideas from sensation, because the mind never per- 
ceives without perceiving that it perceives. Hence, all our ideas 
are ideas from reflection. Ideas from sensation are abstractions 
from ideas from reflection. Therefore, the mind is not passively 
furnished with ideas of any kind. All ideas are produced by the 
mind as active. The mind itself has passivity in respect of out- 
side impressions, but the ideas are produced, not by these impres- 
sions but by the mind so impressed. Of the two powers or 
qualities, motivity appears to be the most important. Whatever 
Locke may say to the contrary this is the outcome of his premises. 
That this is a true interpretation of Locke is shown, not only by 
demonstraton based upon his premises, but also by his plain state- 
ments. "These powers of the mind, viz., of perceiving, and of 
preferring, are usually called by another name : and the ordinary 
way of speaking is, that the understanding and will are two fac- 
ulties of the mind ; a word proper enough, if it be used as all words 
should be, so as not to breed confusion in men's thoughts, by being 
supposed (as I suspect it has been) to stand for some real beings 
in the soul, that performed those actions of the understanding and 
volition. For when we say the will is the commanding and supe- 
rior faculty of the soul; that it is, or is not free; that it deter- 



72 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



mines the inferior faculties; that it follows the dictates of the 
understanding' etc- though these and the like expressions>by those 
that carefully attend to their own ideas, and the conduct of their 
thoughts more by the evidence of things than the sound of words, 
may be understood in a clear and distinct sense; yet I suspect, I 
say, that this way of speaking of faculties has misled many into 
a confused notion of so many distinct agents in us, which had their 
several provinces and authorities, and did command, obey and 
perform several actions, as so many distinct beings: which has 
been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty 
in questions relating to them."* Perception and volition are thus 
not separate faculties or beings in the mind, as the assumption of 
pure passive perception would have them. In showing that we 
get the clearest idea of active power from spirit, he says, "Nor 
have we of active power (which is the more proper signification 
of the word power) fewer instances: since whatever change is 
observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make 
that change, as well as a possibility in the thing itself to receive 
it. But yet, if we will consider attentively, bodies, by our senses, 
do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power as 
we have from reflection on the operation of our minds. For all 
power relating to action, — and there being but two sorts of 
action whereof we have any idea, viz., thinking and 
motion, — let us consider whence we have the clearest ideas 
of the powers which produce these actions."! Thinking is the 
manifestation of an active power, and perception is not distinct 
from thinking. The efficacy whereby an idea is changed or pro- 
duced, "however various, and the effects almost infinite, yet we 
can, I think, conceive it, in intellectual agents, to be nothing else 
but modes of thinking and willing."! 

33. Perception. There are three kinds of perception : 1. The 
perception of ideas in our minds. 2, The perception of signifi- 
cation of signs. 3. The perception of the connexion or repugnancy, 
agreement or disagreement, that is between any of our ideas. 
All these are attributed to the understanding, or the perceptive 

•II. xxi. 6. 
til. xxi. 4. 
%U. xxii. 11. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 73 



power, though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say 
we understand "§ "There can be nothing more certain than that 
the idea we receive from an eternal object is in our minds: this 
is intuitive knowledge."** Since words are only a special kind of 
ideas, the perception of the significance of signs, is the perception 
of the significance of ideas. And as we shall see, all 
simple ideas are held by Locke to be signs. The percep- 
tion of agreement or disagreement of ideas, involves a number of 
"a priori" principles, or as Locke says, "peculiar ways of agree- 
ment or disagreement of our ideas." Locke denominates them 
identity or diversity, relation, co-existence or necessary connection, 
and real existence. Since these various kinds of perception are 
knowledge, we can apply to them Locke's three degrees, viz., in- 
tuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive. In the first there is an im- 
mediate relation of acquaintance between the mind and its ideas. 
This kind of perception gives the highest degree of certainty.J 
"When the mind can not bring its ideas together, as by their im- 
mediate comparison, and as it were juxta-position," it perceives 
the agreement or disagreement by "intervening" ideas, and this 
is reasoning. When clearly perceived it is demonstration. Lastly, 
the perception of the existence of particular external objects com- 
pletes the account. Yet, there appears to be another degree of 
perception which has a higher certainty than any of these. This 
is revelation. Here the mind is purely passive. No reaction or 
doubt is possible, not even when the idea or proposition disagrees 
with common experience and the ordinary course of things. "The 
reason whereof is, because the testimony is of such an one as can 
not deceive, nor be deceived, and that is of God himself. This 
carries with it an assurance beyond doubt, evidence beyond excep- 
tion. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation ; and our assent 
to it, faith; which as absolutely determines our minds, and as 
perfectly excludes all wavering, as our knowledge itself ; and we 
may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revel- 
ation from God be true."§ Evidently revelation has a peculiar 

in. xxL 5. fiv. II. 1. 

**rv. ii. 14 §IV. xvl. 14. 



74 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



potency, but just what this is, is not evident. Locke says God 
"illuminates the mind with a supernatural light. ,, "If he would 
have us to assent to the truth of any proposition, he either evi- 
dences that truth by the usual methods of natural reason, or else 
makes it known to be the truth which he would have us assent to, 
by his authority; and convinces us that it is from him, by some 
marks which reason can not be mistaken in."* Although reason 
may be used to determine what is or what is not "inspired," yet 
it has no power over the matter of revelation. Reason is like the 
chirographist who determines who has written a given document, 
but has no authority over the contents of the document. What 
are these "marks" of revelation? Mere belief or enthusiasm is no 
sign of inspiration. Neither is natural reason. "Thus we see the 
holy men of old, who had revelations from God, had something 
else besides that internal light of assurance in their own minds, to 
testify to them that it was from God. They were not left to their 
own persuasions alone, that those persuasions were from God; 
but had outward signs to convince them of the author of those 
revelations."! Thus we confront the miracles, the burning bush, 
the loaves and fishes, the fiery furnace, and all the rest. When 
God wishes to reveal something he not only has to excite the 
proper ideas in the mind of the prophet but he has to back them 
up with a supernatural occurrence. Those of us who get no revel- 
ations have to depend upon natural reason and the Scriptures 
which are attested revelation. But it is not clear that the far- 
famed prestidigitator, the "Prince of Darkness," might not dup- 
licate the genuine miracles, and have certain revelations of his 
own attested in Scripture. Revelation now appears to be not a 
different kind of perception, but just the perception of the signi- 
fication of signs. The origin of the inspired ideas or their pecu- 
liar combination, however, must be attributed directly to God and 
not to sensation or reflection. 

•IV. xix. 14. 
tiv. xlx. 15. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 75 



This completes our account of the nature and origin of knowl- 
edge, according to Locke. Next comes the validity and extent of 
knowledge. 

34. Criterion of Truth. Locke's obvious criterion of truth 
is correspondence or agreement. "Truth, then, seems to me, is 
the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining 
or separating of signs, as the things signified by them agree or 
disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs, 
here meant, is what by another name is called proposition. So 
that truth properly belongs only to propositions; whereof there 
are two sorts, viz., mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of 
signs commonly made use of, viz., ideas and words."* 'The ideas 
in our minds being only so many perceptions, or appearances there, 
none of them are false ; the idea of a centaur having no falsehood 
in it, when it appears in our minds, than the name centaur has 
falsehood in it when it is pronounced by our mouths or written 
on paper. For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirma- 
tion, or negation, mental or verbal, our ideas are not capable, any 
of them, of being false, till the mind passes some judgment on 
them, of being false; that is, affirms or denies something of 
them."f "Whenever the mind refers any of its ideas to anything 
extraneous to them, they are then capable to be called true or 
false. Because the mind in such a reference makes a tacit suppo- 
sition of their conformity to that thing ; which supposition, as it 
happens to be true or false, so the ideas themselves come to be 
denominated.":): There are three classes of things, extraneous to 
ideas, to which ideas may be said to conform or agree. "First, 
when the mind supposes any idea it has conformable to that in 
other men's minds, called by the same common name," as justice, 
temperance, religion. "Secondly, when the mind supposes any 
idea it has in itself to be conformable to some real existence. 
Thus the two ideas of a man and a centaur, supposed to be the 
ideas of real substances, are the one true, and the other false; 
the one having a conformity to what has really existed, the other 
not." "Thirdly, when the mind refers any of its ideas to the real 
•rv. v. 2. 

til. xxxii. 8. 
til. xxxii. 4. 



76 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



constitution and essence of anything whereon all its properties 
depend: and thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of sub- 
stances are false."* "As to the truth or falsehood of our ideas, in 
reference to the real existence of things ; when that is made the 
standard of their truth, none of them can be termed false, but only 
our complex ideas of substances."§ When I say that the violet 
is blue, that is a true proposition because there is something in 
the thing itself corresponding to that idea. Mere likeness or un- 
likeness of an idea to the quality it represents, has nothing to do 
with the question of truth. The point is, there must be an agree- 
ment or conformity between the two if the proposition is true. 
All simple ideas are therefore true, or rather they are neither true 
nor false. Falsity comes in when complex ideas are compounded 
of ideas in ways which nature never put together and which are 
judged to represent some real existence. 

In spite of all the care Locke spends in developing his agreement 
criterion of truth, he is not able to apply it in a concrete case; 
and from the nature of his universe he can not apply it. Only 
God, or some of the superior angels could apply it. According to 
his general theory the mind knows only its ideas. It does not per- 
ceive the qualities of things, much less the essence of the substance 
in which these qualities stick. The mind can not judge that any 
idea is conformable to something that is not and can not be an 
object for the mind. This criterion of truth is a useless piece of 
machinery. 

35. Propositions. Making a proposition, according to Locke, 
is the joining or separating of signs, whether words or ideas. 
Verbal propositions are words joined or separated to make an 
affirmation or denial. Mental propositions are ideas likewise 
related. Purely verbal propositions are trifling and give us no 
knowledge. For example, when two abstract terms are affirmed 
one of the other, the significance is merely of sounds, as the 
proposition, "gratitude is justice." Or again, when part of a com- 
plex idea which any term stands for is predicated of that term, 
e. g., that "gold is a metal." The general rule for purely verbal 

§n. xxxll. 5. 
tn. acxxii. 13. 



c 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 77 



propositions is that "whenever the distinct idea any real word 
stands for is not known and considered, and something not con- 
tained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it: there our 
thoughts stick wholly in sounds, and we are able to attain no real 
truth or falsehood."* Mental propositions are nothing but the 
perception of the connection or separation of ideas, which ideas 
have been joined or separated by the mind itself. True proposi- 
tions are those in which the ideas joined or separated agree with 
or conform to the connection or separation of the real things of 
which they are signs. False propositions are those in which they 
do not. "Our knowledge, therefore, is real, only so far as there 
is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things."t 
But where ideas are added or separated, when their certain agree- 
ment or disagreement is not perceived, but presumed to be so: 
that is judgment." J All knowledge is thus propositional and true. 
Judgment may or may not be true. "Knowledge being to be had 
only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowl- 
edge but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which 
is not true."§ Since the mind is not able in all cases to construct 
certainly true propositions, many of our propositions are judg- 
ments whose truth is only probable. Now, probability is the 
appearance of truth. A probable proposition is one that the mind 
forms by the process of demonstration from fallible proofs. The 
perception is not immediate and certain, hence probability is 
fallibility. "Our knowledge, as has been shown, being very nar- 
row, and we not happy enough to find certain truth in everything 
which we have occasion to consider ; most of the propositions we 
think, reason, discourse, nay act upon, are such, as we can not 
have undoubted knowledge of their truth : yet some of them border 
so near upon certainty, that we make no doubt at all about them ; 
but assent to them as firmly, and act according to that assent, as 
resolutely, as if they were infallibly demonstrated, and that our 
knowledge of them was perfect and certain. But there being de- 
grees herein from the very neighborhood of certainty and demon- 

•IV. vlil. 13. *IV. xiv. 4. 

try. iv. 8. 5iv. xx. i. 



78 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



stration, quite down to improbability and unlikeness, even to the 
confines of impossibility: and also degrees of assent from full 
assurance and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt, and 
distrust."* Why does the mind separate or join ideas? Evidently 
the mind is actuated by a truth purpose. The mind makes propo- 
sitions which it impresses upon itself with the purpose of con- 
structing something that conforms to or agrees with reality. 
Since all knowledge is propositional, the mind's whole system of 
knowledge, whether of nature or mind, is a construction made by 
the mind from the raw material of impressions by means of its 
various powers or qualities, and impressed upon itself by itself, 
and appearing before the mind as ideas variously arranged, with 
the additional idea that the proposition is made by the mind. But 
this conclusion annihilates Locke's agreement criterion of truth. 
36. An Example of a True Proposition. Locke has led us 
to believe that a true mental proposition is one in which the ideas 
are joined 'or separated in a manner corresponding to the way in 
which the things of which the ideas are marks or signs, are joined 
or separated. As we have already learned, the things of which 
ideas are marks or signs are the primary and secondary qualities, 
critically regarded, as has been explained, and are not and can not 
be, objects for the mind. The criterion of agreement or corre- 
spondence implies comparison. But in this case we have to com- 
pare the system of ideas, which we make and know, with the 
qualities of which we are "incurably ignorant." At best, we are, 
as he says, in the "twilight of probability." "It is evident the 
mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention 
of the ideas it has of them."f But qualities are not things them- 
selves. They inhere in substance ; but of the real essence of sub- 
stance we are more incurably ignorant than we are of its qualities. 
Qualities are the elephant that supports ideas; real essence is the 
tortoise that supports qualities. To inquire whether there is some 
support for real essence carries us so far into this mythology that 
it is difficult to find words to make even a verbal judgment. In 

*rv. xv. 2. 
tlV. iv. 3. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 79 



some way, however, God must be the final support. Yet, to know 
a true proposition by the criterion of agreement it would appear 
that we should compare it not only with qualities but with es- 
sences, if not finally with the divine substance and plan of the 
universe. Locke does nothing of the kind. In respect of one kind 
of ideas at least, he openly uses the coherence criterion. "Our 
complex ideas of modes," he says, "being voluntary collections of 
simple ideas, which the mind puts together without reference to 
any real archetypes or standing patterns existing anywhere, are 
and cannot but be adequate ideas. Because they not being intended 
for copies of things really existing, but for archetypes made by the 
mind to rank and denominate things by, can not want anything; 
they having each of them that combination of ideas, and thereby 
that perfection which the mind intended they should."* The 
example he gives of such an idea is a triangle. Perfection or logical 
coherence makes the idea true and adequate. The only example 
he sets over against trifling propositions is this : "We can know 
the truth, and so may be certain in propositions, which affirm 
something of another, which is a necessary consequence of its 
precise complex idea, but not contained in it ; as that the external 
angle of all triangles are bigger than either of the opposite in- 
ternal angles ; which relation of the outward angle to either of the 
opposite internal angles making no part of the complex idea sig- 
nified by the name triangle, this is a real truth, and conveys with 
it instructive real knowledge."! It would seem that the criterion 
of coherence made use of here, would not be inoperative in other 
complex ideas. Sense illusion shows that the mere presence of a 
constellation of simple ideas does not make this constellation true 
or adequate. 

% Locke holds in accordance with his nominalism, that what usu- 
ally passes for the essence of anything, as man or gold, is an 
abstraction and has no counter-part in reality. As a matter of 
convenience the mind binds things into bundles and ranks them 
into sorts,J and annexes names to them. This abstraction 

•II. xxxi. 3. 
tlV. viii. 8. 
til. xxxii. 6. 



80 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



he calls the nominal essence. It is artificial and has no 
real existence. That is, there is no essence man, or gold. 
But on the other hand, the real constitution of things, the "being 
of anything, whereby it is what it is," that on which qualities 
depend,* is, as he says, not without reason held to be wholly un- 
known. "And thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of sub- 
stances, are false."f "Our complex ideas of substances being re- 
ferred to patterns in things themselves, may be false. That they 
are all false, when looked upon as the representations of the un- 
known essences of things, is so evident, that there needs nothing 
to be said of it. I shall therefore pass over that chimerical sup- 
position, ***" ft All we have left then for propositions to conform 
to are qualities. But we arrive at qualities only by inference. 
Ideas must have a cause, we say, therefore there is a cause ade- 
quate to this result. But we can not test the truth of propositions 
by saying that ideas correspond to the real qualities. By our in- 
ference they must correspond. Qualities are the conclusion not 
the premises. By such a procedure there could be no such thing 
as illusion or error. But only simple ideas, by the above infer- 
ence, can be said to be adequate. A proposition is a complex idea. 
Hence we are cut off even from inferential connection with the 
conjunction or disjunction of qualities. Moreover, according to 
Locked theory of pleasure and pain, not only may the same causes 
produce ideas of either, but also diverse causes may produce the 
same ideas of either. The argument from adequate causation 
thus falls to pieces, and we are left with ideas. 

Let us now take up an example of a true proposition, and see 
just what makes it true. This proposition must be one of those 
that increases our knowledge. Locke's so-called trifling proposi- 
tions of identity, as "substance is substance," of predicating a 
part of the whole, as "lead is a metal," of affirming part of the 
definition of the term defined, as "gold is yellow," are very certain, 
but they concern only the signification of words and are not in- 
structive, hence we can not use them. Also our example can not 
be expressed in general or abstract terms. We must affirm or 

•m. iii. 15. 

til. xxxii. 5. s* ****r 

til. xxxii. 18. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 81 



deny something of a "this," since there are only particular exist- 
ences. To say that gold is hard, malleable, heavy, yellow, soluble 
in aqua regia, etc., is not going outside the definition of gold and is 
not instructive, according to Locke. Let us take a common fact 
of astronomy : "The sun is 93,000,000 miles from an observer on 
the earth." That seems to satisfy Locke's demands. It is par- 
ticular; the predication is not contained in the subject; it is not 
verbal. It is based upon careful observation and calculation. We 
are instructed by it. 

The terms of this proposition are all within the realm of ideas. 
The sun we are talking about is this particular bright disk mov- 
ing across the sky, which, if we were closer and could exist as 
observers, we should see to be a huge flaming gaseous sphere. 
That we do not see it as a huge flaming sphere does not put it as 
such outside the world of ideas. The bluish gray mass yonder on 
the sky-line is a clump of trees. The so-called real appearance of 
the trees is that appearance in a certain class of appearances 
which I judge from practical or scientific reasons to be typical. 
The real tree of common-sense and science, is, in the terminology 
of Locke, a particular group of ideas, out of a class of such ideas, 
judged to be primary and typical for a certain purpose. If this 
purpose is to regard the cellular structure of the tree, then the 
"real" tree is that group or correlation of groups of ideas we get 
by looking though a microscope. If it is the molecular or atomic 
structure we are after, we regard those groups of ideas real which 
we get by looking through the imagination. We should see the 
atoms like so many pollen grains if our eyes were only sharp 
enough. So the real sun for science is that group of ideas we 
should get if we were in such a position as the purposes of astron- 
omy demand. We supply the deficiency by imagining how it would 
look under certain conditions of observation, and describe it in 
accordance with this. After this fashion, the stenographer I 
draw us a picture of a lunar landscape, or the geologist a restora- 
tion of prehistoric monsters, or the historian "a morning's walk 



82 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



in Rome under the reign of Commodus." Most of our realities are 
"restorations," ideal constructions; but which are nevertheless 
part of and continuous with "ideas" ; soul of their soul and flesh 
of their flesh. This then is what we mean by the sun : an idea, in 
the mind, in Locke's sense. 

Likewise the observer and the earth are ideas. The term, 
93,000,000 miles must be considered as a sign of ideas we can 
never get at once. Our best way of comprehending this distance 
is by illustrations. A cannon shot, with the velocity of 2,500 feet 
per second, would require over six years to reach the sun. A 
railroad train with a speed of 60 miles an hour would require, it 
is said, 175 years. If we represent the sun by a globe two feet 
in diameter, the earth on the same scale would be the size of a 
very small pea, at a distance of two hundred and twenty feet. 
Feet, miles, railroad trains, and projectiles, are in Locke's realm 
of ideas. There is plenty of good every day space there. The 
world of the scientist is an interpretation and extension and com- 
pletion of ordinary experience. The world of science is no un- 
knowable mysterious substratum, as Locke at times would have 
us think. It is a perfectly good, sensible world, one that we can 
see, and feel, and hear. What we soon find out is that this 
world which is of one piece with experience can not be had all 
at once and some of it cannot be had at all but can only be "re- 
stored" by rigid proof. That the sun is 93,000,000 miles away is 
one of those propositions that requires proof. There are various 
methods, as calculations based on observations of the transit of 
Venus ; as the velocity or aberration of light, motion of the moon, 
etc. What these proofs do is to construct that which can be ex- 
perienced only in the imagination, and show how it is connected 
and indissolubly bound up with that which is experienced. With- 
out thus being concreted with experience they have no meaning. 
All these proofs are demonstrations that our world is harmoni- 
ously extended beyond experience, that the world is a consistent 
whole. The proposition about the distance of the sun is true 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 83 



because it is in harmony with such other propositions as "this 
stick is three feet long/' Thus, complicated scientific propositions 
are true because they are consistent with or in harmony with other 
propositions. These other propositions which are called facts, 
are* true because they represent or agree with certain "ideas." 
For example, the proposition "this stick is thirty-six inches long," 
is true because of a certain complex idea, yard stick. The actual 
criterion of truth is both agreement and consistency. But the 
agreement is not between propositions and unknowable reality, 
but between propositions and experience. Thus true propositions 
must have empirical consistency. Since propositions are ideas, it 
is seen that the truth of a proposition depends upon something 
in the mind, in Locke's sense. 

Locke has a great deal to say about patterns and archetypes, 
and that propositions are true if they conform to them and false 
if they do not.* But what is an archetype? Our idea of a horse 
if its existence is affirmed, is true because there is such an animal, 
but our idea of a centaur is false because there is no such animal 
in nature. This is Locke's argument. But existing in nature 
means just those complex ideas from sensation. There are no 
such complex ideas as centaurs. But in all this we do not have to 
go beyond the realm of ideas. Locke's fundamental assumption 
of "ideas" does not demand it. Then there is an uncertainty about 
what he means by knoweledge. Sometimes he says knowledge is 
the agreement or disagreement of ideas. This would seem to 
leave out any extramental comparison. It would be in vain, how- 
ever, to try to get a coherent theory of knowledge and truth from 
Locke. His confusion of idea and quality is marked in these in- 
stances. After laying all the corner stones of the above coherence 
theory of truth, and which he can not escape from, he quietly in- 
serts quality for idea and then begins to talk about conformity U 
archetypes. But Locke can not talk about any sun that does not 
belong to the realm of ideas. When he thinks he is, we might 
train some of his own guns upon him. In criticising Male- 
branche's hypothesis of "Seeing things in God," he asks, "how can 

•II. xxxii. 26. 



84 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



he know that there is any such real being in the world as the sun ? 
Did he ever see the sun ? No ; but on occasion of the presence of 
the sun to his eyes, he has seen the idea of sun in God, which 
God has exhibited to him ; but the sun, because it can not be united 
to his soul, he can not see. How does he know that there is a sun, 
a sun which he never saw? And since God does all things by the 
most compendious ways, what need is there that God should make 
a sun that we might see its idea in him when he pleased to exhibit 
it, when this might as well be done without any real sun at all."* 
So far as the divine economy is concerned it is just as useless for 
God to make a real sun and have to annex ideas to certain of its 
motions as to occasion ideas when these certain motions obtain. 
The only difference seems to be that in the one case ideas are con- 
nected with certain motions as permanent appendages annexed 
once and for all, while in the other case God has to keep busy con- 
necting the appropriate ideas to their causes. If Malebranche sees 
the sun in God, Locke sees the sun in his own mind. If Male- 
branche never sees the real sun, neither does Locke: if the one 
does not know of its existence, neither does the other. But Locke's 
criticism is perfectly just, applied either to Malebranche or to 
himself; and it removes the least ground for an agreement cri- 
terion of truth in the sense that a true proposition agrees with or 
conforms to some pattern or archetype not an idea and external to 
the mind. 

37. Ideas are Marks of Something Other. Although Locke 
holds that there are simple ideas, yet he maintains just as vigor- 
ously that ideas either simple or complex, are marks or signs of 
something other than themselves. But an idea can not be simple 
and significant at the same time. If it is a sign, besides being 
what it is, it must have some other idea annexed to it, by which it 
points to or indicates that of which it is said to be the sign. Here 
we come to the essential inconsistency of Locke's system. His 
system consists of two quests : the genesis of knowledge and the 
validity of knowledge. In the first place, in the case of material 

•(Exam. P. M.'s Opin. 20.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 85 



bodies, Locke makes his hypothesis of an external world of incog- 
nitive substances that have certain primary qualities, which cause 
ideas in the mind. This hypothesis is verified if it can explain the 
facts of experience better than any other. Locke believes that it 
does. But the central thing in the origin of knowledge is the sim- 
ple idea. All knowledge is composed of simple unanalyzable ob- 
jects. But these are effects in the mind. These ideas are simple 
because as effects they are simple. Being simple they are neces- 
sarily independent. The simple idea of whiteness, although con- 
nected or associated with the idea of coldness, in the case of a 
snowball, is nevertheless independent and distinct. This follows 
from the hypothesis ; for whiteness is produced by an entirely dis- 
tinct and independent cause, viz., a peculiar conformation of snow 
crystals which reflect white producing corpuscles, which in turn 
affect only the eye. By no other channel can whiteness be pro- 
duced, and just this peculiar chain of causes and no other produces 
the idea of whiteness. Even in this, however, Locke is not con- 
sistent; because the ideas of pleasure and pain and the primary 
ideas are produced by no independent channel, and no simple sec- 
ondary idea can free itself from them. But we must ignore this, 
as Locke does, in treating the origin of knowledge. Just as two 
or more telegraphic messages may be sent over the same wire at 
the same time, so we may suppose that in some way, physically 
possible, the proximate causes of simple ideas are independent, 
notwithstanding they come in by the same route. The simple idea 
is necessary, not only to Locke's doctrine of the association and 
compounding of ideas, but also to the distinction between primary 
and secondary qualities. If the idea of extension be not simple 
and independent, then Locke could never separate it from the 
secondary ideas in order to show the more permanent and impor- 
tant nature of its cause. But without this distinction, Locked 
hypothetical real material world would have to be revised. A 
simple idea, according to Locke, is a simple effect in the mind 
which can not be analyzed into parts, and his material world is in- 



86 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



vented for the express purpose of supplying these simple effects. 

In this connection, the reason why there is an external material 
world is the mind's innate repugnancy to the affirmation of un- 
caused ideas. The mind is here like a cashier in a large depart- 
ment store which is fitted with a system of pneumatic tubes 
through which money to and from every part of the store is sent 
from and to him. Shut up in his office, he can be imagined to 
reason thus : "Here are certain coins and bills. Sometimes they 
come singly and sometimes together, but in all cases, I can distin- 
guish certain definite unanalyzable units. I do not make this 
money ; but it is here, and I can not suppose that it has not been 
made, therefore, it has been made somewhere and sent in through 
these tubes to me. All I can do is to arrange or classify it or send 
it out again. Of the real constitution and essence of this external 
realm I am incurably ignorant. But that there is such a realm I 
am certain. I am therefore justified in making an hypothesis 
about this external realm. But my hypothesis must explain the 
presence of these simple objects here. If my hypothesis on the 
other hand, based on the assumption that there is a real external 
realm, forces me to the conclusion that these objects I get are not 
simple and unanalyzable, I have then to choose between what I 
have supposed my innate repugnancy forces me to presume, i. e., 
an external realm of causes, and what I intuitively perceive, i. e., 
these simple unanalyzable objects. But if my hypothesis forces me 
to deny my intuitive knowledge, it is evidently unreliable." 

When Locke comes to consider ideas from the side of the 
validity of knowledge, his hypothesis of an external material 
world does force the conclusion that ideas are never simple. This 
conclusion is patent but not acknowledged by Locke. 

In explaining what he means by clear and obscure ideas, he 
says, "The perception of the mind being most aptly explained by 
words relating to sight, we shall best understand what is meant 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 87 



by clear and obscure in our ideas by reflecting on what discovers 
to us visible objects, we give the name obscure to that which is not 
placed in a light sufficient to discover minutely to us the figure 
and colors which are observable in it, and which in a better light, 
would be discernable. In like manner our simple ideas are clear 
when they are such as the objects themselves, from whence they 
are taken, did or might, in a well-ordered sensation or perception, 
present them."* This, of course, is confused. What he is really 
talking about is ideas of ideas. I have the idea of a tree, i. e., I 
perceive a tree. When I no longer see the tree, I may remember it 
and make propositions about it. The idea I have of the tree when 
I no longer see it, may be clear or confused. "Whilst the memory 
retains them thus, and can produce them to the mind, whenever it 
has occasion to consider them, they are clear ideas."f But these 
ideas, which can be said to have meanings, are manifestly, not 
simple ideas from sensation, yet he treats them as if they were, 
and gives simple ideas from sensation the character of significance 
which belongs properly to remembered ideas. The cause of this 
confusion is the old story of identifying idea with quality. Locke 
probably thinks he is treating simple ideas as clear and obscure, 
and hence, as signs. "The causes of obscurity in simple ideas," 
he explains, "seem to be either dull organs, or very slight or tran- 
sient impressions made by the objects, or else a weakness in the 
memory not able to retain them as received. ''J But the last cause 
clearly can not be admitted, for memory is the "power in many 
cases to revive perceptions which it [the mind] once had, with 
this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them 
before."§ Remembered ideas are necessarily complex, so the 
causes of obscurity in simple ideas are dull organs and slight im- 
pressions. He also says, "As a clear idea is that whereof the mind 
has such a full and evident perception, as it does receive from 
an outward object operating duly on a well-disposed organ ; so a 
distinct idea is that wherein the mind perceives a difference from 
all other; and a confused idea is such a one as is not sufficiently 

•II. xxlx. 2. III. xxix. 3. 

t(Ibld.) III. x. 2. 



88 A STUDY OP LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



distinguishable from another, from which it ought to be differ- 
ent/'* These remarks might apply to a remembered idea but not 
to a simple idea, for an idea caused by an external impression is 
just what it is whether the organ be well-disposed or ill-disposed. 

Ideas are also either real or fantastical, adequate or inadequate, 
true or false. Let us take the first as typical. He means such 
ideas "as have a foundation in nature ; such as have a conformity 
with the real being and existence of things, or with their arche- 
types. Fantastical or chimerical I call such as have no foundation 
in nature, nor have any conformity to that reality of being to 
which they are tacitly referred as to their archetypes/'** The 
agreement criterion is now working smoothly. All simple ideas 
are real, he says, not that they are all exact images of what really 
exists, but that they are the "constant" effects in us of things 
themselves, ordained by our Maker to be such as they are : "the 
reality lying in that steady correspondence they have with the 
distinct constitutions of real beings."? Simple ideas are "as- 
signed to be the marks whereby we are to know and distinguish 
things which we have to do with."§ How we can have a confused 
simple idea which is at the same time real is not clear. 

If we stop to consider what these archetypes or patterns are, to 
which Locke refers, it is evident that they can not be the real 
essence of things. It would be absurd to say that we ever know 
that ideas correspond to that of which we are incurably ignorant. 
But when we consider the facts of sense illusion, it appears that 
we get simple ideas which have no essential archetypes. In cer- 
tain pathological states everything is doubled, or of a character- 
istic color. "Though a man in a fever should from sugar have a 
bitter taste, which at another time would produce a sweet one, 
yet the idea of bitter in that man's mind would be as clear and 
as distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had tasted only gall. 
Nor does it make any more confusion between the two ideas of 

*II. xxix. 4. JII. xxx. 2. 

**II. xxx. 1. fiCIbid.) 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 89 



sweet and bitter, that the same sort of body produces at one time 
one, and at another time another idea by the taste, than that it 
makes a confusion in two ideas of white and sweet, or white and 
round, that the same piece of sugar produces them both in the 
mind at the same time."* Locke would say, probably, that in 
these cases the sense organ is deranged so that the motion it sets 
up in the animal spirits corresponds not to the actual external 
impression but to another impression which under normal condi- 
tions would give this motion. He can not avoid asserting that, 
if everything appears yellow to a man with jaundice, the yellow is 
a true, adequate, and right, simple idea. If this be his conclusion, 
and he has made no reservations, the archetypes or patterns of 
which ideas are marks or signs are the last motions in the animal 
spirits or brain that occur just before the idea arises in the mind.f 
The chain of motions from the external real thing are beset with 
so many hazards and modifications, that the only thing, which 
God has ordained to produce such and such ideas, is the last link 
in this chain. After the manner of Locke on Malebranche, in the 
words of Berkley, we might venture to ask how he knows that the 
whole choir of Heaven and furniture of the earth is not a mere 
ferment in his skull established and ordained by God. But since 
his skull is a part of the furniture of the earth, where is the final 
motion to take place? Or, on the other hand, if the archetypes of 
which simple ideas are marks or signs, are the primary qualities 
of things, and we know when an idea is true and right and ade- 
quate, as "sensible matter of fact," then the whole apparatus of 
ideas, sense organs, nerves, animal spirits, the dark cabinet and 
all the rest, appear to be altogether useless. If I know things aa 
they are, what is the use of signs or marks? 

Passing over these objections, it is certain that Locke holds thai 
simple ideas are the representations or appearances as marks or 
signs of something other than themselves. Every simple idea. 
even the very first one, must be something like this : "1 am what 

•II. xi. 3. 

t(Exam. of P. M.'s Opin. 10.) 



90 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



I am, and I am also the sign of some real existence other than 
what I am." 

To take up the idea of the cashier, supposing him to believe in 
a hard money basis, and supposing only paper money comes to 
him through the pneumatic tubes, we can imagine him reasoning 
thus : "Here are various bills which are the signs of real money 
which has actual existence in the external world. To be sure these 
green-backs do not say that there is gold or silver deposited in the 
treasury to redeem them, but I know from my science of political 
economy that the real basis for them is actual gold and silver. 
Green-backs are only secondary money and represent no real ex- 
istence in the external world. They are simply the secondary 
effects of real money. On the other hand, these gold or 
silver certificates are primary effects of real money. Real money 
exists out there whether I have any certificates of it or not. But 
I am now confronted with a peculiar problem in the case of coun- 
terfeit money. There are true green-backs and counterfeit 
green-backs, true gold and silver certificates and counterfeit 
certificates; but how am I to tell the true from the false? 
Theoretically I know that the true bills correspond to some real 
existence other than themselves of which the Government in its 
wisdom has ordained they shall be the marks or signs. But the 
counterfeit bills come in through the tubes just as the real ones 
do, and since I do not make them, I am compelled, by a certain 
repugnancy of my mind to assert that they correspond to some 
real existence, and consequently are true bills. All simple bills 
are true, adequate, and right. The Government that has estab- 
lished and regulates this pneumatic system and the financial world 
beyond has ordained that just these bills and no others shall come 
to me ; otherwise I should not have them. Falsity comes in when 
I classify them with bills which are not what they claim on their 
face to be. But this does not seem to help me. How can I know 
that a bill is not what it claims to be ? Since I can not get out into 
the external world, whatever I do must be done here in my office. 
I must seek for principles and uniformities among these bills. I 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 91 



must discover a system of classification. When I have done this, 
I shall judge those bills counterfeits which, classified as what they 
claim to be, do not harmonize with this system. My hypothesis of 
an external world is thus entirely useless to me. Perhaps I have 
been wrong in supposing there is an external world and a pneu- 
matic system. Instead of being enclosed in a small office, I may be 
in a large room, running across these bills here and there. Per- 
haps this big room, with bills floating about, is one complete 
system, and that my repugnancy to uncaused bills is just my in- 
nate desire to discover this system. I can never discover the 
absolute truth of this system until I get all of it." This is just the 
case with Locke's "ideas." If they are signs of an external reality 
we have no way of determining their truth or falsity. The 
assumption of an external world is of no use to us. We are com- 
pelled to adopt the theory of the organic unity of experience. 

38. The Doctrine of Two Worlds. Notwithstanding that the 
body with its so-called sense organs, nerves, and brain is a part 
of the internal material, the world of ideas, it is altogether prob- 
able that Locke assumes their real external existence, in his sense, 
from the very first. Supposing this is true, it is easy to see why 
he clings so tenaciously to his unperceived external world. He 
probably began as a common-sense observer noting the concom- 
itant variations between the condition of his eyes, ears, and skin, 
and the presence, condition, or absence of the objects in his expe- 
rience. One does not perceive real bodies immediately, Locke 
probably reasoned, but by means of the sense organs, nerves, and 
brain. Thus there exists between the perceiving mind and the 
real objects these organic structures. What takes place in them, 
when we perceive objects, is motions of one sort or another. It 
is obvious that these motions are not like the objects we perceive. 
Therefore, these motions, or rather, the last motion that occurs 
in the brain, is the cause of our perceiving an object ; and more- 
over the object we perceive can not be the real object but a repre- 
sentation which is the sign of the real object. All the objects we 



&2 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



perceive are in the mind. All this is clear and obvious ; for does 
not anatomy and physiology show that the eye is adapted for the 
receiving and transmitting just those motions of the light cor- 
puscles, and is not the ear adapted for receiving and transmitting 
motions of the air? When our eyes are afflicted with cataracts 
or when our ears have no drums, is it not a fact we see or hear 
imperfectly or not at all? "It is plain those perceptions are pro- 
duced in us by exterior causes affecting our senses : because those 
that want the organs of any sense never can have the ideas belong- 
ing to that sense produced in their minds. This is too evident to 
be doubted: and therefore we can not but be assured that they 
come by the organs of that sense, and no other way. The organs 
themselves, it is plain, do not produce them ; for then the eyes of 
a man in the dark would produce colors, and his nose smell roses in 
the winter : but we see nobody gets the relish of a pineapple till he 
goes to the Indies, where it is, and tastes it."* It thus seems 
certain to Locke that we perceive only the effects of the motions 
in our minds. It is probable therefore that his doctrine of ideas 
was subsequent to and adopted to harmonize with his adopted 
theory of the sense organs and nervous system. The genetic order 
of his reasoning begins with an external world, proceeds to the 
sense organs, nerves, and brain, and culminates in his doctrine 
of ideas. Having shut himself in a dark cabinet, he is able to show 
the validity of his knowledge only by a tour de force. This he does 
by a direct appeal to common-sense. But the external world he 
adopts is not the external world of common-sense, and this appeal 
gives him no support. 

This doctrine of two worlds, the world of ideas which includes 
all that we experience, and the world of real things which we do 
not experience but which is the cause of what we do experience, is 
devised to explain the correspondence between the structure and 
condition of the body and its organs and the perception or the 
having of objects. The doctrine of two worlds is involved not 
only in interactionalism but also in parallelism and epiphenomin- 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



93 



alism. The peculiar thing about this doctrine is, that the propo- 
sition that there are two worlds, is involved both in the premises 
and in the conclusion. We begin by affirming that whatever is 
perceived by means of a medium either as a cause or parallel con- 
dition is only an effect or an accompanying occurrence of some 
cause or other occurrence. The body is seen to be the proximate 
cause or parallel condition of our perceiving objects. Therefore, 
what we perceive is not a real object but only an effect or parallel 
occurrence. In other words, I perceive immediately an external 
world of uniformity and law. I also perceive immediately that 
this world of uniformity and law is perceived by me only on the 
condition and hazard of one part of it, my body. Therefore, what 
is perceived immediately is not perceived immediately. I perceive 
my body to be the condition or cause of my having or perceiving 
objects, yet as a part of the external real world I do not and can 
not perceive it at all. 

This correspondence between "body and mind" takes place in 
our one world of experience. Why we should not be like pure 
spirits is indeed a mystery. But it is a mystery in our one world 
of experience. But the doctrine of two worlds does not dispel this 
mystery. Interactionism, parallelism, or epiphenominalism, are 
just as incomprehensible and mysterious as that which they at- 
tempt to explain. It must be admitted that parallelism, if it is 
given, not as an explanation but as an attempt to state the facts 
of this mystery, is much to be preferred, i. e., a parallelism in 
one world of experience. But besides being as mysterious and in- 
comprehensible as that which it attempts to explain, the doctrine 
of two worlds, like Royce's self-representative series, multiplies 
the mystery indefinitely. The same mysterious correspondence 
breaks out in this world of ideas. Here is the idea of my body 
with its eyes and ears, and skin and nose and palate : all ideas. 
Here is the idea of the external object, the vibrating air and 
Newtonian corpuscles : all ideas. When the idea of the eye shuts, 



94 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



the ideas of external objects no longer appear. When the idea of 
the eye has the idea of cataract in it, ideas of visible objects 
appear imperfectly or not at all. Thus we have a full set of 
grounds for splitting up the world of ideas into external and in- 
ternal realm. This internal world can likewise be dichotomised, 
and so on indefinitely. 

Locke has shown us how diseased and imperfect organs of sense 
interfere with external sense perception. We have supposed that 
the correspondence between the condition of the sense organs and 
perceived objects, determined Locke to his doctrine of ideas or two 
worlds. Quite as strong a case can be made out, by the same 
method, for the dependence of ideas from reflection upon the con- 
dition of the body, especially the brain. A blow on the head puts 
an end to ideas from reflection quite as effectually as closing the 
eye puts an end to ideas of visible objects. Locke himself fur- 
nishes instances of a man cured of madness by a surgical opera- 
tion.* The effects of alcohol, drugs, coffee, tea, and tobacco, upon 
ideas from reflection were well known to Locke. Just as a similar 
class of facts forces him to attribute a mediating function to 
the sense organs, nerves and brain, in respect of ideas from sen- 
sation, so this class of facts must force him to attribute a like 
function to some part of the body, presumably the brain, in re- 
spect of ideas from reflection. Some certain parts of the brain, 
and not the mind itself, are the internal sense organs. Without 
presuming too much upon modern physiological psychology, it 
seems certain that the argument leads to some form of localization 
in the brain of the proximate causes of all ideas. The mind con- 
sequently either does not have active powers or it is duplex, with 
the brain as a partition. Locke can not admit the former. The 
perception of ideas from reflection is then a sort of intellectual 
osmosis. But this is against Locke's concept of the mind as a 
unitary substance. The argument has thus brought Locke into 
a veritable cut de sac. It plays havoc not only with his conception 
of the mind itself but with the external world as well. The brain, 
being the "mind's presence room," is the location of the proximate 






A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 95 



causes of all ideas. These causes mix freely together in the pres- 
ence room. Not only does the motion set up by one material body 
get transformed into the motion properly set up by another, as 
when sugar tastes bitter, but also motions set up by material 
bodies, as alcohol or opium, produce modifications among the 
causes of ideas from reflection, and are in no way due to the active 
mind substance. It is now certain that the mere claim of an idea 
to be the mark of such and such a thing can not be taken at its 
face value. We can never be certain an idea from reflection has 
not been set up by some material motion, or that an idea from 
sensation is not due to the active powers of the mind. 

39. Real Existence. In the case of his external world, Locke 
puts forward what he calls knowledge of real existence. "It is 
therefore the actual receiving of ideas from without, that gives 
us notice of the existence of other things, and makes us know that 
something doth exist at that time without us, which causes that 
idea in us, though perhaps we neither know nor consider how it 
does it : for it takes not from the certainty of our senses, and the 
ideas we receive by them, that we know not the manner wherein 
they are produced, v. g., whilst I write this I have, by the paper 
affecting my eyes, that idea produced in my mind which, what- 
ever object causes, I call white; by which I know that that quality 
or accident (i. e., whose appearance before my eyes always causes 
that idea) doth really exist, and hath a being without me. And of 
this, the greatest assurance I can possibly have, and to which my 
faculties can attain, is the testimony of my eyes, which are the 
proper and sole judges of this thing, whose testimony I have rea- 
son to rely on as so certain, that I can no more doubt, whilst I 
write this, that I see white and black, and that something really 
exists, that causes that sensation in me, than that I write or move 
my hand : which is a certainty as great as human nature is capable 
of, concerning the existence of anything but a man's self alone, 
and of God."* Although this knowledge is not so certain as in- 

•IV. xi. 2. 



96 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



tuition or deductions of our reason, "yet it is an assurance that 
deserves the name of knowledge." "I think nobody can, in earn- 
est, be so skeptical as to be uncertain of the existence of those 
things which he sees and feels. At least, he that can doubt so far 
(whatever he may have with his own thoughts) will never have 
any controversy with me; since he can never be sure I say any- 
thing contrary to his own opinion. As to myself, I think God has 
given me assurance enough of the existence of things without me ; 
since by their different application I can produce in myself both 
pleasure and pain, which is one great concernment of my present 
state. This is certain, the confidence that our faculties do not 
herein deceive us is the greatest assurances we are capable of, con- 
cerning the existence of material beings. For we cannot act any- 
thing but by our faculties ; nor talk of knowledge itself, but by the 
helps of those faculties which are fitted to apprehend even what 
knowledge is."* Locke's course of thought here runs very little 
above common-sense. With his characteristic ambiguity at cru- 
cial stages in his reasoning, he uses two kinds of external worlds : 
the common-sense external world and his own hypothetical ex- 
ternal world. What cogency there is in his argument applies to 
the former ; but he appropriates it for the latter. 

Locke says that his eyes are the proper and sole judges of visible 
objects, yet by his own theory and assertions they deceive him in 
regard to all the visible secondary qualities and some of the pri- 
mary. He says that he can not doubt that he sees white and black 
and that something really exists which causes these "sensations" 
(ideas) in him. The first part of this statement no one doubts. 
There is the experience of black letters on a white surface. But 
that something really exists distinct from the paper and ink as 
this constellation of ideas, and in a space distinct from this system 
of related ideas, as say in a fourth dimension, that not only may 
be doubted, but it is also not even demanded by natural science 
or common-sense. The book on the shelf before me, call it a com- 
plex idea if you like, is just as real a thing as I want. If there is 

*rv. xi. 3. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 97 



some mysterious fourth dimensional reality supporting it, which 
I do not experience and can not experience, it does not interest me. 
I experience no repugnancy at all in resting with this "complex 
idea." I call this constellation of "ideas," that interests me, a real 
thing, a book. It is related by various systems of relations to 
other real things. I do not seek for a cause aside from other 
"complex ideas" ; the paper mill, printing press, author, and book 
agent. 

Another consideration, according to Locke, that proves the real 
existence of his external world, is the fact that an idea from sen- 
sation is distinct from an idea from memory. "There is a mani- 
fest difference between the ideas laid up in my memory (over 
which, if they were there only, I should have constantly the same 
power to dispose of them, and lay them by at pleasure) and those 
which force themselves upon me, and I can not avoid having. 
And therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, and the brisk 
acting of some objects without me, whose efficacy I can not resist, 
that produces those ideas in my mind, whether I will or no. Be- 
sides, there is nobody who doth not perceive the difference in him- 
self between contemplating the sun, as he hath the idea of it in 
his memory, and actually looking upon it ; of which two his per- 
ception is so distinct, that few of his ideas are more distinguish- 
able one from another. And therefore he hath certain knowledge, 
that they are not both memory, or the actions of his mind, and 
fancies only within him ; but that actual seeing hath a cause with- 
out."* Locke assumes that ideas from memory and fancy can be 
disposed of at will. But there is a stubbornness about both mem- 
ories and fancies quite comparable to that of ideas from sensation. 
Locke gives an account of how he came to write this Essay. Can 
he dispose of that memory at his pleasure? To be sure he can turn 
his attention to something else, but so he can do with the sun. 
He can shut his eyes. • And as he himself says, one can be so en- 
grossed in some train of thought as to be entirely oblivious to the 
solicitations of the senses. But the ideas of memory and fancy 

•IV. xi. 5. 



i 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



have causes, i. e., the mind itself, and apparently there is no reason 
for not identifying their causes with that which causes ideas from 
sensation, except upon the ground that there is this distinction in 
causes, which distinction is just now the point at issue. It will 
be readily granted that there is a difference between the idea of 
the sun from sensation and the idea of the sun flrom memory. This 
is a statement of fact. But what is the difference? We have his 

own word that a remembered idea is the same idea we had before 
with the additional idea that we had it before. Suppose the re- 
membered idea is the weaker, there is nothing against supposing 
that it is produced by some weaker external material cause, say 
some echoing motion of the brain. This would be supported by 
the fact that the simple ideas of the remembered idea are of just 
the same kind as those of the idea from sensation. If the dis- 
tinction insisted upon is, not that one is weaker than the other, but 
that there is an accompanying idea that " I have had this before," 
that would not apply to ideas from fancy. But to consider only 
memory, do not ideas from sensation have an accompanying idea 
that, "I have not had this before?" What these significant ideas 
are is an apprehension of my biography; remembered ideas fit 
into it in one place and sensational ideas fit into it in another. So 
the mere presence of a sign or mark that dates an idea now or in 
the past is no guarantee that an idea of one sort has not the same 
cause or ground as one of another. 

"Pleasure or pain which accompanies actual sensation, accom- 
panies not the returning of those ideas," says Locke, "without the 
external objects,***." Thus the pain of heat or cold, when the idea 
of it is reVived in our minds, gives us no disturbance ; which, when 
felt, was very troublesome, and is again, when actually repeated ; 
which is occasioned by the disorder the external object causes in 
our bodies when applied to it. And we remember the pains of 
hunger, thirst, or the headache, without any pain at all; which 
would either never disturb us, or else constantly do it, as often as 
we thought of it, were there nothing more but ideas floating in 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 99 



our minds, and appearances entertaining our fancies, without the 
real existence of things affecting us from abroad. The same may 
be said of pleasure accompanying several actual sensations, and 
though mathematical demonstrations depend not upon sense, yet 
the examining them by diagrams gives great credit to the evidence 
of our sight, and seems to give it a certainty approaching to that 
of demonstration itself."* Now, pleasure and pain, as he has told 
us, are "only different constitutions of the mind, sometimes occa- 
sioned by disorder in the body, sometimes by thoughts of the 
mind."t "By pleasure and pain, delight and uneasiness, I must all 
along be understood (as I have above intimated) to mean, not 
only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or uneasi- 
ness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful or unaccept- 
able sensation or reflection.''^ And again: "Delight or uneasi- 
ness, one or the other of them, joins themselves to almost all our 
ideas, both of reflection and sensation : and there is scarce any 
affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our 
mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain."§ 
Juxtaposing these quotations seems sufficient to invalidate his ar- 
gument. How can pleasure and pain be a guarantee of external 
reality when they attach themselves to all kinds of ideas? The 
fancies of the misanthrope, the hallucinations of the insane, the 
imaginings of one suffering from the delirium of a fever ; and the 
dreams and nightmares, the sorrows, disappointments, and 
wranglings of ordinary life, all carry their pains, more acute, if 
we are to judge by the accounts, than purely physical pains. And 
likewise the pleasure of good company, rational thinking, right- 
eous behavior, poetry, fiction, and a thousand others, are com- 
parable and usually supposed superior to the pleasures of our 
senses. Not the least among the pleasures is that of philosophy. 
"I here put into thy hands," says Locke to the reader, "what has 
been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours : if it has 
the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half 
so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, thou will as 

•IV. xl. 6. fill xx. 15. 

til. xx. 1 I". vli. 2. 



i 



100 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



little think of thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed." 

Locke says that although actual hunger and thirst are painful, 
remembered hunger and thirst are not. What does this prove? 
Obviously that a present idea from sensation is different from the 
memory of it. Locke here is assuming that the alternative to his 
explanation is that all common-sense objects are fancies of the 
mind. But why not say that these objects are mere ideas of the 
mind? Locke himself has tried to show that the mind perceives 
only its ideas, and thus he horrifies common-sense. Now he tries 
to exploit this horror for his own use. But because I rest with 
common-sense objects, e very-day houses, books, trees, and refuse 
to postulate an unperceived and unperceivable realm of causes 
for them, does not convict me of calling them fancies of my mind. 
If any one has tried to show that common-sense objects are fancies 
of the mind, Locke is that one. 

Nothwithstanding that Locke speaks so confidently about the 
real existence of his external world, yet he feels that he has not 
made out a good case. It is foolish and vain, he thinks, for a man 
to doubt very plain and clear truths just because they are not 
capable of sure and certain demonstration and are open to the 
"pretense of doubting."* A belief in the existence of the external 
world is necessary to carry on the practical affairs of life. This 
uncertainty of his is more apparent because of his refusal to meet 
the objections to his doctrine. He admits that it can be doubted 
but calls it folly to do so. It is folly, presumably, because we have 
to act upon the assumption of the external world. Its truth is 
pragmatic. But the world that concerns us as practical beings is 
the common-sense external world, or the world of ideas from sen- 
sation according to Locke. Nobody doubts this external world. 
Locke's ugly mathematical realm, steeped in infinite darkness and 
silence, more gruesome and abominable than the City of Dreadful 
Night, this is the world that is of no practical importance and 
whose existence may be doubted, 
•rv. xi. 10. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 101 



In regard to sense experience Locke says, "If any one say, a 
dream may do the same thing, and all these ideas may be produced 
without any external objects ; he may please to dream that I make 
him this answer: 1. That it is no great matter, whether I re- 
move this scruple or no : where all is but dream, reasoning and 
arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing. 2. That 
I believe he will allow very manifest difference between dreaming 
of being in the fire, and being actually in) it."t The supposition 
that our ideas may not have an external cause, is admitted by 
Locke to be a possible and therefore a rational supposition. To 
call this a dream is thus merely figurative. Add to this Locke's 
admission that the way in which an external object can cause an 
idea in us is incomprehensible, and the obvious conclusion that 
all ideas are ideas from reflection, i. e., caused by the mind acting 
upon itself, it does not appear to be irrational to make such a 
dupposition. 
rrv. il 14. 






102 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 



40. Conclusion. This study of Locke's theory of knowledge is 
therefore an argument for the organic unity of experience. Ac- 
cording to Locke the world of knowledge is distinct and separate 
from reality. This doctrine of two worlds has been attacked at 
all points. The reasons for choosing it have been sought for and 
shown to be insufficient. The rationalistic lumber Locke has piled 
upon this foundation has been examined and has been found con- 
fusing, unnecessary ad contradictory. At every turn, in contra- 
distinction to Locke's dualism, the adequacy of "organic experi- 
entialism," as Dr. J. A. Leighton calls it, has been pointed out. 
Electrons and stars, knowledge and facts, thoughts and reality, 
all belong to one world of experience. There are no isolated atoms, 
independent facts, irreducible pluralisms, or absolute insulations : 
this has been the contention. The universe is not pluralistic but 
organic. Locke's Essay in a large part is in harmony with organic 
experientialism. This harmony has been shown at length. Locke 
beheld the truth from time to time between rifts in his rational- 
istic fog, but for the most part he groped and stumbled. 

The obvious loose and incoherent style of this study will be seen 
after a consideration of these concluding remarks, to be a super- 
ficial appearance due to the Socratic procedure. 



A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 103 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I, Raymond Gregory, was born near New Antioch, Ohio, 
October 1, 1879. I received my early education in a country 
school. In 1897, I entered the High School at New Vienna, Ohio, 
and completed the course in 1900. In January, 1910, I entered 
Wilmington College, and in June, 1912, I received the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts. The following school year I attended Haver- 
ford College, and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The 
next year I went to Harvard University and received the degree of 
Master of Arts. In September, 1915, I entered the graduate 
school of the Ohio State University, and continued in residence 
until June, 1917. 



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